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ILLUSIONS 
AND DISILLUSIONS 



Touching upon Topics 
in Every Day Life 



BY 

EDITH C. JOHNSON 



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PUBLISHED BY 

EDITH C. JOHNSON 

OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA 
1920 



\°v 






COPYRIGHTED, 1920 

BY 

EDITH C. JOHNSON 



BECKTOLD 
PRINTING & BOOK MPO. CO^ 
ST. LOUIS, U.S.A. 



NOV -b 1920 
©CU601427 



TO THE MANY LOYAL FRIENDS 
AND READERS WHOSE GEN- 
EROUS ENCOURAGEMENT HAS 
MADE PUBLICATION POSSIBLE, 
THIS BOOK IS APPRECIATIVELY 
DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. 



AUTHOR'S FOREWORD 

The essays in this book have been selected from my 
writings which have appeared daily in the Oklahoman 
during the past two years. For the most part, I have 
chosen the essays which have brought me the widest 
response from my readers, those that have impelled 
readers to say to me, *'I have had the very same 
thoughts, though I did not put them into so many 
words ^\ 

In a single sentence we have the function of the 
writer — to put other persons' ideas, thoughts and aspi- 
rations into definite, readable form. Writers have no 
monopoly on thoughts and ideas^ — ^which are the com- 
mon property of mankind. Many of the most vital 
thoughts in this volume have come to me from others, 
who gave them out, consciously or unconsciously. 
Thoughts and ideas come from everywhere. Really, we 
live in a surging sea of thought. 

In this, my first volume, I have discussed a good 
many subjects which perplex men and women who are 
much wdser than myself. My excuse for daring to an- 
alyze them is that I lay no claim to special knowledge, 
nor do I boast of any ability to offer the final solution. 
I merely try to talk things over, rather intimatel}^ with 
my readers, and to present my ideas in a simple, 
straightforward and common-sense way. 

Sometimes, my readers ask me how it is that I can 
find so much to write about, how it is that, barring 
emergencies, I can write 365 days in the year. If that 
be a triumph of energy and industry, it is one that I 
want to share fairl}^ with hundreds of friends and 

5 



author's foreword 

readers. One of the most delightful aspects of the 
work that I am so happy to be doing is the great num- 
ber of letters and messages and requests that come to 
me, suggesting live topics, or asking for a discussion of 
some given subject. When I first began to write these 
daily essays, I had moments of terror when I wondered 
how long I could keep them up. Now, I know that I 
do not have to make any great effort to keep this work 
going. Men, women, their emotions, their perplexities, 
their ideas, together with the march of events in the 
world, will keep the thing going for me. And not the 
least of the many charms this work has for me is the 
occasional discovery of myself. So often, it happens 
that we do not know what we think, how we feel about 
a subject, until we are forced to think about it, to mar- 
shal our ideas and put down our thoughts. Then, we 
find that beneath the superficial or mortal conscious- 
ness, there is a deeper consciousness which comes for- 
ward and in the most delightfully obliging manner 
gives up all kinds of ideas and impressions we did not 
dream were there. All the time, that deeper conscious- 
ness has been quietly thinking, feeling, sorting, arrang- 
ing, and it is no secret among the guild of writers, that 
it is when they are able to tap the wells of that deeper 
consciousness they do their best work. And after all, 
it is not a personal consciousness, but a reflection of 
the world consciousness, which is a very complex thing, 
indeed, something concerning which the best of us can 
understand but little, but about which all of us con- 
stantly are trying to learn more. 

E. C. J. 



CONTENTS 



Page 

Author's Foreword 5 

Introduction » . 9 

Are You Liked at Home ? 11 

Women Prefer Plain Men 14 

Sane Self -Interest * 17 

Human Shock Absorbers 21 

Good Talkers Can Be Made 24 

Salesmanship for Wives 27 

Ideal of ''Pansy Hill" 30 

Personality Is The Key 33 

Widowers, Can They Love Again? 36 

Who Is The Greatest Woman? 39 

Faith and Its Miracles 42 

Appreciation As a Gift 45 

''Dangerous Age" In Men 48 

Uses of Amiability 51 

The Emotional Temperament 55 

Cult of Simplicity . 58 

Marriage : Why Men Fail 61 

Marriage : Why Women Fail 65 

"Thank You" Pays Dividends 69 

Recreation for Housewives 72 

Pity, Don't Condemn Snobs 75 

Character is Power 79 

Woman — Practical Poet ...*.... 82 

Modern Chesterfields 86 

Beauty of the Later Love 89 

Wit Versus Silver Plate 92 

7 



CONTENTS 

Page 

Humor, The Saving Grace 95 

Can Men Reform Wives? 98 

What is True Culture? 102 

Measuring Woman's Success 105 

If You Could Live Again 109 

Mistaken Self -Sacrifice 112 

The Art of Growing Old 115 

A Fortune in Friends 118 

Looking Up Into the Sky 121 

Roses and the Life of Man 125 

What a Teacher Can Do 128 

Gray Hairs and Opportunity 131 

Business Women for Wives 134 

Men ''Forgetting" to Propose 137 

Poetry in Life 's Prose 140 

Insignia of a Lady 144 

After College— What? 147 

The Cheerful Husband 150 

Marriage and the Margin of Age 153 

Glory of the Dinner Hour 156 



INTRODUCTION. 



I recently took a long dip in the Spectator, of Addi- 
son and Steele, to make up my mind whether the Essays 
are really classics or only classics that are dead and don 't 
know it. This thing I soon found ; that time after time I 
started upon a Spectator essay, resolved to read only a 
part of it, to get its gist and apprehend its purpose, and 
every time I read to the end. This is a pretty sure test 
of the classic. 

I have had exactly the same experience in reading 
Edith Johnson's essays as they appeared in newspaper 
form. Scanning the paper, with meager time at my dis- 
posal, deeply interested in the events of the day, I would 
say to myself, ' ' I will skip Miss Johnson this time ' '. But 
if I read the first paragraph, I found it necessary to go 
on to the end. I feel sure this same experience must 
have come to thousands of her readers. She would be 
the last to claim that this quality of her writing estab- 
lishes it as classic; but it seems fair to say that it does 
indicate a highly unusual power of interest and charm 
in the art of writing. R. L. S. said that the first prin- 
ciple of novel writing is to make every page interesting. 
Miss Johnson makes every paragraph interesting, and 
this is distinctly a greater achievement in the essay than 
in the novel. 

Miss Johnson seems to have no conscious style of writ- 
ing. I am particular to use the word "seems". The 
uncritical reader would probably say, if asked about her 
style, that she has just a natural style. He could not 
pay a higher compliment. He is speaking better than he 
knows. Every practiced writer has a conscious style, 
and if he succeeds in making it natural at last, he has 
arrived at that perfection of art which conceals art. 

But this quality of interestingness does not inhere in 
style alone. Miss Johnson stays very closely with those 
facts of life which are of daily and universal interest; 
and since literature is the expression of life, she is always 
expressing life, always saying things for the multitude 
wliich the multitude cannot or does not say for itself. 

9 



INTRODUCTION 

Thus it comes about that she puts into adequate expres- 
sion the nebulous thoughts of the many, so that each one 
is moved to say, ''I have often thought just that". Yes, 
he has often thought it, but it has been vague and 
valueless; now it is fixed and permanent. 

Her writings constitute, in fact, a philosophy of every 
day life — in particular of the every day life of women. 
She writes of women's problems with remarkable frank- 
ness and freedom and therefore does not escape their 
criticism. But on the whole the soundness of her views 
is recognized, and it is not surprising to learn that when 
a certain women's club recently voted its opinion as to 
those persons who are entitled to mention among the 
*' Who's Who" of this state. Miss Johnson's name won 
the greatest applause of all. Perhaps the dominant note 
of her championship of women is the claim of their 
economic independence and the assertion of their in- 
dividual personality. But she goes about it reasonably. 
She is no man-hater, raging at her sex's wrongs. She 
is not even a feminist — though, come to think about it, 
perhaps she is. It depends on what you mean. If she 
is, it is with satisfactory reservations. 

But the woman question in all its angles is only one 
phase of her wide-ranging literary production. She 
wrote on every issue of the war, and supported every 
good activity connected with it, with eager patriotism 
and convincing power; she writes with equal poise of 
home-making and of city-building ; she has a very facile 
pen indeed for criticism in art; her interviews with 
celebrities are interesting in every line, for they tell 
us just what we wish to know; she appreciates the ma- 
terial conquests of men, but stands staunchly for the 
ideal; she writes of the emotional side of life with a 
very rare insight, sympathy, and power. It is not 
strange, then, that she is undoubtedly the most widely 
read writer in the state and that her name is becoming 
more and more widely known beyond its limits. 

Every reader of this volume should remember that a 
book of essays is not to be read at one sitting. 

A. C. Scott. 
10 



ARE YOU LIKED AT HOME? 

OW do you stand in your own home ? Are you 
popular with your own family, or is your good 
reputation confined to the esteem that you win 
from the world outside? 

When you go away for a season, do the polite farewells 
of your relatives conceal a secret sense of relief? Are 
their protests of regret well-invented fictions, or do they 
feel the regret they express? 

When you return, is there a genuine expression of de- 
light over your home-coming ?i Do your relatives look 
upon your re-appearance as the coming of sunshine into 
the family circle, or do they in their desire to be kindly, 
have to try to make you feel a welcome that is not in 
their hearts? 

It makes little difference what a big figure you cut in 
the world, if you cut a poor one at home. You may win 
a national reputation for achievement, and still be a fail- 
ure if those that are nearest to you cannot award you the 
palm of success in your home relations and life. A man 
may possess a genius so extraordinary as to make him 
an international figure. Yet if his wife and children 
do not listen for the sound of his voice eagerly, he likely 
will not weigh very heavily in the scales of eternity. 
No matter how popular a woman may be in society, how 
forceful in club work, philanthropy and politics, her 
achievements are a negligible quantity if she is not gra- 
cious, gentle and lovable in her own circle; if her pres- 
ence is not like a benediction within the four walls of 
her home. 

11 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

When a man is running for office and his own district, 
whether it be precinct, ward, county or state, returns a 
vote against him, you may be pretty sure that there is 
something wrong with that man. The home-folk very 
probably know him. Most any of us, by the exercise of 
a little cleverness can achieve a certain degree of favor 
and popularity among people who know only our surface 
manner and character. But it takes men and women 
of pure purpose, fine disposition and sound character to 
stand well among those who are in a position to know 
them best. 

The thing that really counts in this life is the estimate 
that is put upon us by the members of our own families, 
by our associates in business and the people in our home 
town. 

When I hear men and women complaining that they, 
as prophets, are without honor in their own country, 
that their talents and abilities are not appreciated, I 
cannot help wondering if they are not overestimating 
their own abilities and expecting deserts that do not 
rightfully belong to them. If we do anything to de- 
serve praise, we most certainly are going to get it. Nor 
do we have to rush off to the ends of the world to make 
a reputation for our abilities, if we have something that 
is worth while. Look at William Allen White, Walt 
Mason and Ed Howe. They have something the world 
wanted and the world went to them. 

You may go into a strange country, and armed with 
certain talents and plenty of sophistication, you can put 
yourself over. But what deep or lasting satisfaction 
will that bring you, if you cannot put yourself over in 
your own home? 

12 



ARE YOU LIKED AT HOME? 

What good will it do you to make a fortune out of 
your town, if the people in it do not love and admire 
you? The respect that you win from the world by rea- 
son of your peculiar abilities is a pretty chilly thing, if 
it is not accompanied by the love and admiration of the 
people who make that success possible to you. 

The only real and lasting honor and admiration that 
can come to any of us must come from those that stand 
nearest to us — the members of our families, our friends, 
our associates and our townspeople. 

If you are the prophet without honor in your own 
country — don't blame the country — look into your own 
heart. 



13 




V/OMEN PREFER PLAIN MEN 

HAT do women most admire in men? Doctor 
Paola Mantegazza, the celebrated Italian an- 
thropologist and pathologist, declares, in 
''The Book of Love", that the three mascu- 
line qualities most admired by women are strength, 
courage, and talent. 

It is significant that no Avriter, no philosopher, puts 
much faith in beauty as a source of masculine attrac- 
tiveness. And despite his contention that ''all love 
phenomena are ba.sed on and dominated by aesthetic 
considerations". Doctor Mantegazza admits that sheer 
beauty will not render a man charming to the majority 
of women. In fact, most women are rather afraid of 
masculine pulchritude. They hesistate long before 
they will marry a handsome man with the expectation 
of lifelong fidelity. 

This element of fear, undoubtedly, has reconciled the 
majority of women to the rather prevalent plainness in 
men, despite the assertions of science that their daughters 
must inherit their good looks from their fathers, and not 
from them. For it has been pretty well demonstrated 
that pretty girls have their fathers to thank for their 
prettiness, and that beauty is perpetuated through the 
male, not the female line. 

Plain men, however, have not suffered from unpopular- 
ity and their plainness has not been an appreciable 
handicap to their success in either business or society. 
In this respect, the sexes manifest a marked difference. 
A woman's loveliness is her greatest asset. One might 

14 



WOMEN PREFER PLAIN MEN 

parody a famous line in poetry to read, '^ Beauty is of 
man's life a thing apart; 'tis woman's whole existence". 

Man's plainness, largely the result of our hustle, our 
get-rich-quick methods, the strain and stress of commer- 
cial competition, of too much smoking and too much 
indiscriminate drinking, all of which have served to 
stunt his growth and enfeeble his constitution, is gen- 
erally atoned for by intelligence, good manners and 
appearance. Even downright ugliness is frequently re- 
deemed by an alert expression and an air of distinction. 
A stern jaw often suggests strength of will, firmness of 
character and latent reserve powers. In small eyes 
there may lurk the fire of genius, or at least, the death- 
less enthusiasm that accomplishes things. A wrinkled 
brow will give evidence of deep thought and large pow- 
ers of concentration. Good eyes will invariably atone 
for rugged or irregular features. A short man can hold 
himself with an upright smartness, and a tall well-set-up 
figure will literally cover a multitude of small physical 
imperfections. 

The plainest man can make himself attractive by a 
proper consideration for his dress. He can show his wit 
in the choice of his tailor, and he can select clothes that 
will give the impression of his being at once opulent, 
artistic and business-like. Now, an orthodox writer 
would, at this point, dilate on the hideousness of man's 
dress, its utter lack of grace and want of color. Being 
a free lance, I will declare that the average well-dressed 
man never looked better than in his well-selected busi- 
ness or lounge suit, and the present day military uni- 
form, designed for its utility, with its olive-drab color 
as a means of camouflage, is really a very stunning thing. 

15 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

It frequently happens that a plain man will have a 
definite power of attraction for the loveliest of women. 
It may be that she is attracted to her opposite, or it may 
be that she will brook no rival near her throne. Then, 
too, the trend of modern thought may have something 
to say on the subject. The modern woman with her 
newly-acquired freedom, her recent invasion of man's 
world, her ideals of strenuous living, has no use for an 
insipid man, though he may be as handsome as Apollo. 
She can find no place in her affection for the scented ex- 
quisite or the glorified dandy that charmed his lady in 
the days of Watteau. Rather would she see him brown 
and rough-hewn, and serenely unaware of his lack of 
grace. She knows, too, that many a plain face and 
form is the outward shell of a big soul, a keen brain and 
a soaring ambition. She has more or less scorn for the 
''beauty man*'. 

If civilization and big business had not marred them 
in the making, we might have a good many more hand- 
some, stalwart men. Our forbears handed down to us 
a fairly rich legacy in the way of health, strength and 
physical perfections. The Celts gave us dark eyes and 
hair and clear, bright complexions. The Anglo-Saxon 
contributed blue eyes, fair hair and skin and a tremend- 
ous endurance. We owe no small debt to the Danish in- 
vaders for their height, fine forms and splendid physique. 

''Man must make himself more manly in order to con- 
quer the love of the daughters of Eve," says Doctor 
Mantegazza. They will have to be regular Napoleons 
and Caesars if they are going to conquer the women of a 
future day. 

16 




SANE SELF-INTEREST 

YOU take an interest in yourself ? This is not 
necessarily a foolish question, for the world 
holds a good many persons who are not suffi- 
ciently enterprising to take a genuine and 
wholesome interest in themselves. Barring the desire 
to have something to eat, a roof over their heads and a 
few clothes, they are scarcely more concerned about their 
own destinies than those of people they do not know. 
Being interested in yourself does not infer either van- 
ity or conceit. It simply means that you will make the 
best of your environment, your talents and your oppor- 
tunities. If you are interested in yourself, you will take 
care to train your mind. You will not be content to use 
10 per cent of your capacity. You will try to get a 100 
per cent result. If you are interested in yourself, you 
will not permit yourself to go through life and learn 
nothing from your experiences. The purpose of experi- 
ence is to develop men and women mentally and spirit- 
ually. Some persons can travel around the world and 
be none the richer on their return. Others are visited 
with love, with sorrow, with disappointment, with oppor- 
tunity, and yet remain static year after year. They do 
not grow one whit wiser or kinder or more sympathetic. 
They die with the same stock of ideas, feelings and 
opinions that they carried around with them in their 
youth. 

If you are interested in yourself, you will take care 
of your body. You will ascertain just what you can 
endure, and you will not encroach upon the margin of 
your health and strength. People who are top-heavy, 

17 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

that is people who have powerful minds and frail bodies, 
have to conserve their forces carefully, or one blue day 
they die at the top. Nor is it sufficient to strike a safe 
balance between wear and repair. For if you are in- 
terested in yourself, you will want to keep yourself not 
only physically well, but physically attractive. You 
will make personal cleanliness a part of your religion, 
and you would as soon go without your dinner as your 
bath. You will not wear just anything that strikes your 
fancy. You will first ask yourself these questions : ' * Is 
it appropriate? Is it becoming? Will it insure my 
looking well-dressed? I cannot expect people to love 
and admire me just for my mind and character. I must 
be pleasing to the eye as well'*. 

If you are properly interested in yourself you will 
try to make friends wherever you are, for much of the 
happiness of life is secured by means of pleasant asso- 
ciations. 

The easiest and surest way of making friends is to take 
a sincere interest in others. Men and women instinct- 
ively feel a friendly and unselfish interest whenever they 
come in contact with it. If you want friends you will 
first have to be one. Another thing — you will have to 
be cheerful about it. Friendship is a plant that loves 
the sun. It does not grow well under clouds. 

How often we hear people say, ' ' I care for only a few 
friends". That is a very mistaken and short-sighted 
policy. We need all the friends that we can make. We 
need to have people feeling kindly toward us. We need 
to cast out love and cheer and favors on many waters if 
we expect them to return to us in after days. The idea 
that any human being can be so self-sufficient as to get 

18 



SANE SELF-INTEREST 

along without friends is the extreme of folly. Certain 
rich men seem to cherish that notion. How lonely they 
are when misfortune comes ! 

If you are interested in yourself, you will make up 
your mind to love your work. The other day a working 
woman said to me : ' ' I love my work and I grow younger 
with it". Now, if I were to tell you how she makes her 
living you would probably say, ' ' Oh, I would loathe do- 
ing that!" for her work is of a very taxing and fatigu- 
ing character. But, making it, as she does, the means by 
which she can radiate a bit of sunshine in her world 
every day, the means by which she can help and serve 
others, she cannot help being happy in that work. So 
much heart and mind and sweetness does she put into it 
that it becomes a constant source of inspiration to her. 

If you are interested in yourself, you will try to be as 
happy as you can. About nine-tenths of all the illness 
in this world is due to unhappiness. A bitter hour acts 
like a dose of poison. It filters through every pore of 
your body, and it paralyzes the powers of the mind. 

Happiness is a physical and mental cocktail. A smile 
takes the edge off of care. A cheerful attitude makes 
the thing that looked as if it might become a burden just 
as ordinary circumstances of life. One of the greatest 
problems of life is to fill our days with sunshine. Little 
favors extended to others, the passing word of encour- 
agement, unselfish deeds done in an open-hearted man- 
ner, courtesies scattered by the way, a sincere and timely 
appreciation of the other fellow's efforts, help to make 
us as well as others happy. No pleasure can surpass 
that of the consciousness of a strong and generous char- 
acter. It is a solace for one's darkest hour. 

19 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

This may sound paradoxical, but it is true, neverthe- 
less, that if you are not rightly interested in yourself 
you cannot be genuinely interested in other people. 
Sane self-interest is a distinctly human quality. If you 
are sufficiently interested in yourself to make the very 
best out of your life and talents, you will want others 
to do likewise. No man can actually lift himself with- 
out lifting others with him. That is one of the inexor- 
able laws of life. 



20 




HUMAN SHOCK ABSORBERS 

SN 'T she a desperately uncomfortable person ? ' ' 

a woman remarked of one of her friends. 

''No matter what happens she worries about 

it. Everything in life is hard for her, not 

because she is more unfortunate than others, but because 

she takes it so. Wouldn't it be a blessing to her and 

those about her if she could live more comfortably ? ' ' 

Comfortable people are the shock absorbers of society. 
By their good nature and their philosophical acceptance 
of unpleasant facts and events, they seem to be able to 
take the jar out of living, both for themselves and their 
associates. They always seem to be ready to meet emer- 
gencies, and not to be greatly disturbed by them. They 
smile easily, though they do not giggle or laugh con- 
tinually. 

How many times you have been at a party where, 
though the guests were clever enough, everybody ap- 
peared to be on a strain ! The atmosphere had that op- 
pressive feeling that precedes a storm. All the clever 
people in the company were working just as hard as 
they could to maintain their reputation for cleverness 
and to entertain the group. Some of them were even 
brilliant. Yet, between every one of their sallies, a 
deadly silence would fall over the company and every- 
body would be ill at ease. 

Then, suddenly, one of those thoroughly comfortable 
women would enter that tense room. Though she did 
not make the slightest effort to be brilliant, everybody's 
nerves relaxed under the influence of her spontaneity. 

21 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

Her remarks probably were quite commonplace. Yet, 
who expects or wants one of those soothing, healing com- 
fortable persons to be purveyors of wit? 

Too many persons believe that the world can be saved 
only by strife and turmoil; like, for instance, the 
**reds". They cannot conceive of bettering conditions 
amicably. They must tear down the whole structure 
and rebuild in their own way. They want to set every- 
body right in a minute. They have no conception of the 
methods that are used by the comfortable people in 
order to right some of this world's wrongs. They do 
not, like the comfortable people, know just how far to go. 

"You know I have principles", said a woman with a 
militant air. So, indeed, should she have principles. 
Everybody should have principles. However, there is 
such a thing as being too noisy and insistent about your 
principles, particularly in the ordinary touch-and-go of 
life. These people who are so constantly aware of their 
principles are very trying creatures. Never are they 
able to see the humor in their own actions. Nor are they 
ever capable of doing that eminently comfortable thing 
— laugh at themselves. 

"I just get up in the morning and I say to myself as 
I start to work: 'Here is another beautiful day'." 

You know, already, don't you, that she is one of the 
comfortable women who no matter what happens is 
ready to smile and speak a kind word to all human 
creatures, regardless of their condition of life. If you 
were in her place, you would probably think that you 
were having a very hard time of it. But she doesn't 
think so. She does not work merely to get a living, but 
in her contacts with the public, to make others happy 

22 



HUMAN SHOCK ABSORBERS 

and comfortable. And you won't be surprised will you, 
dearly beloved, when I tell you that every year she looks 
younger than she looked the year before. How such 
women do teach us the folly of ill-natured resistance! 
How their everyday lives are an exposition of that good 
old text: ''Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof". 

Chronically uncomfortable persons wear out the pa- 
tience and affection of their friends. Your friends are 
quick to give you their help and sympathy when you 
have some real sorrow or difficulty. The best and most 
devoted to them, however, cannot forever put up with 
irritability and complaining. Constant nagging will 
wear out the staunchest friendship, just as it rends 
asunder many a home. 

When you look at the comfortable people, you wonder 
why more of us do not imitate them, so great are their 
rewards. They may not always make a million or 
achieve worldwide fame. Nevertheless, they get through 
life with less wear and tear on their minds and their 
bodies. They enjoy more tranquility and happiness than 
most of us. They draw friends to them continually and 
they make everybody love them. 



23 



GOOD TALKERS CAN BE MADE 



HENEVER I accept an invitation to dinner or 
to an evening party where the company does 
not play cards, I find myself at a painful loss 
for something interesting to say ' ', is the bur- 
den of one reader's plaint. ' ' The longer I remain silent, 
the more terrified I am. Sometimes I am so uncomfort- 
able that I vow right then that I never will be guilty of 
accepting another invitation. Can you suggest how I 
may remedy this defect in myself?" 

There are t^o classes of persons who fail at conversa- 
tion. One includes those who suffer so keenly from 
self-consciousness that they are frightened at the sound 
of their own voices. The other class comprises those 
who can think of nothing interesting to say. No remedy 
can be prescribed for the first class of sufferers except 
to assure them that intelligence, common sense and de- 
termination, if exercised diligently, will work the miracle 
and to reiterate that trite saying that if they will think 
more of the pleasure and happiness of others and less 
about themselves, they will likely find their tongues and 
get along very well. 

The ability to talk is much like the ability to write. If 
you have something to write, you can find words in 
which to write it. If you have something to say, you can 
usually find a way to say it. For it is having something 
to write or to say that makes the interesting writer or 
talker. You are moved to comment upon the shallow- 
ness of an acquaintance's conversation for precisely 
the same reason that you throw aside a book, a magazine 

24 



GOOD TALKERS CAN BE MADE 

or newspaper with the remark: ''There is absolutely 
nothing in that". Facility of expression will not con- 
ceal poverty of thought. 

It is a wise man who is eager to correct his deficiency 
as a conversationalist and who will take the trouble to 
effect the change, for men and women cannot overesti- 
mate the advantage of being good talkers. A pleasant 
manner of approach and the ability to talk entertain- 
ingly and sympathetically will open the door to almost 
every heart. A good talker is welcome in every com- 
munity. Hostesses seek him for their dinner tables. 
Men welcome him in their clubs. Wherever he goes, he 
makes friends and he secures customers and clients. 
Every man who is successful owes something of his 
advancement to his ability to talk pleasingly and intel- 
ligently, just as every man who is a failure must charge 
up a part of his failure to his inability to present his 
case. 

You may be poor and you may feel that you have no 
chance in life. You may have others dependent upon 
you, and for that reason, you may not have been able 
to go to school as much as you should have gone. Your 
environment may be anything but inspiring. The people 
about you may be flippant, slangy and slip-shod in their 
speech. Your ears may be tortured with vulgarisms 
such as: ''You bet your life", "Search me", "Well, 
isn't that the limits' "Yes, I gave him the once over 
and believe me, I don't think he is any great shakes". 
Even so, you may train yourself to be a delightful talker 
if in spite of the tearing-down influence of your associa- 
tions, you will think carefully before you speak, if you 
will read and observe and listen to every good talker 

25 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

3^ou meet. If you are sincerely ambitious, every good 
book, every v^ell-written magazine or newspaper article 
will be a help to you. 

You see men and women who have unpleasant man- 
nerisms, and a clumsy way of expressing themselves, al- 
though you know they have had a good education and 
some opportunity to associate with, people of refinement. 
You wonder how they could have remained blunderers 
all their lives. It is because they are too self-satisfied 
to subject themselves to a severe self -analysis, or too lazy 
for self-discipline. They take themselves as they find 
themselves and they expect others to do the same. 

There is no deep and dark mystery about being a good 
talker. Anyone may cultivate the art of being a good 
conversationalist who will take the trouble to do so. 
Success as a talker is achieved by the same methods as 
every other kind of success. Good talkers do not hap- 
pen. They are evolved by thought, observation, study 
and persistent effort. They must have as a background 
a fair knowledge of the world's literature and history. 
They must keep well up on current events. They must 
do enough independent thinking to have a few ideas of 
their own. Then, they must know how to clothe their 
knowledge, their thoughts and ideas in an attractive 
form. 

To confess that you are not and cannot be a good con- 
versationalist is tantamount to admitting that you will 
not pay the price. 



26 




SALESMANSHIP FOR WIVES 

VERY one of us has something to sell. The 
lawyer sells his knowledge of the law, his 
ability to advise a client and to represent him 
in the courts. The doctor sells his ability to 
diagnose an ailment, his knowledge of the best means of 
treating it, and perhaps, his skill as a surgeon. The 
architect sells his ability to design a building and over- 
see its construction. The engineer sells his capacity for 
running a locomotive, the stenographer her skill as a 
typist and her ability to look after the details of her em- 
ployer's business. The writer sells ideas and his skill 
in presenting them. Everybody that is anybody stands 
ready to dispose of his product, his ideas or his service. 
For this reason every man and every woman should be a 
student of salesmanship. 

''What could I do with a knowledge of salesmanship?" 
demands a wife who has not grasped the idea that like 
all other workers she has something to sell and the more 
skill she acquires in the selling, the happier and more 
successful she will be. 

Every wife ought to be a careful student of salesman- 
ship. And if she would set herself to this task, I believe 
in almost every instance it would do away with that all 
too prevalent feeling that her work does not amount to 
anything. She would come to understand that the only 
person whose work does not amount to anything is the 
one whose work is not well done. She would also see 
that she is not a "dependent", that she by her skilled 
service absolutely earns her living and the money she 
has to spend. 

27 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

Do you know the four steps in making a sale? 

They are to arouse interest, to create desire, to make 
the sale, and to insure satisfaction. 

The steps taken in consummating a marriage are iden- 
tical with those in effecting a sale. Woman ^s first step 
is to arouse the interest of an eligible man. The next is 
to create in him a desire to marry her. Marriage is the 
third step and satisfaction and happiness in married life 
is the fourth and last. 

Suppose that our heroine is safely married. What 
does she sell her husband ? First, her personal devotion 
to him, her ability to encourage his efforts in his busi- 
ness or profession, and her power to inspire him. Her 
second service is her ability to manage a home with effi- 
ciency, and to make it attractive to him. The third of 
her marketable wares is her capacity for bringing up a 
family. Practically every man who marries expects that 
he shall receive in return for his love, his support and 
protection of his wife these three aforementioned things. 
The woman who makes a failure of her marriage, sup- 
posing that she has married the right kind of man, is 
the woman who does not comprehend or practice these 
fundamental principles of salesmanship. 

Marriage, like any other kind of business, is the 
science of service. This science a wife can apply through 
her pov/er to create satisfaction and happiness in her 
husband. Usually, we can tell at a glance the wife who 
has this power to serve. She manifests it in her appear- 
ance and her manner, in the skill and ease with which she 
runs her home, in her husband's appearance of well- 
being, in the good health, good conduct and the progress 
of her children. 

28 



SALESMANSHIP FOR WIVES 

You have noticed, of course, that the successful sales- 
man markets his goods with the same customers year 
after year, and that seldom does he lose one. Though 
his rivals may offer merchandise just as good, he knows 
how to keep his customers in the attitude of wanting his 
own particular line. So it is with the wife who is a 
good saleswoman. She keeps her husband wanting her, 
depending upon her, loving her, feeling that he could 
not live without her, that her loss would be irreparable. 
No other woman has any temptation for him. She is 
the only woman in the world so far as he is concerned. 
The same principle applies to her children. She con- 
vinces them and keeps them convinced that she is the 
best, brightest, cleverest, most sympathetic and under- 
standing mother that ever lived. 

Every woman who anticipates marriage, every woman 
who is married, should have this motto graven on her 
heart, ''She profits most who serves best", for that is 
the epitome of salesmanship. 



29 



IDEAL OF 'PANSY HILL" 



HAVE just said to my wife that we will start 
another 'Pansy Hill'." These interesting 
words were uttered by a young professional 
man who with his wife had just gone into a 
city to make it their future home. Like a great many 
other young couples, they had not yet made their mil- 
lions and they could not indulge their rather aesthetic 
taste in the selection of a home. Their little pile would 
not buy the latest style of architecture, hard wood floors, 
white enamel and grounds that had been done by a land- 
scape gardener. But, loving beautiful things as they did, 
they would content themselves with an unpretentious 
cottage and small grounds which they would convert 
into a Pansy Hill. 

You never have heard of Pansy Hill, have you ? Well, 
it is a little log house perched on a knoll and overlook- 
ing the surrounding country, near Harriman, Tennes- 
see. In the house lives an elderly couple, who by 
thought and labor have made their modest cottage one 
of the show places of Tennessee. The place is a riot 
of bloom, pansies predominating. Men and women from 
everywhere drive out to see it, and it is the envy of not 
a few persons who make their homes in mansions. 

Everybody cannot be rich, but everybody can create 
beauty in his surroundings. The crucial test of true 
gentility is not wealth but poverty. The real aristocrats 
of this world keep a hold on the sweet courtesies of life, 
and strive to create beauty around them even in time 
of adversity. When they have to accept a condition that 

30 



roEAL OP PANSY HILL'' 

is not in harmony with their taste and ideas, they take 
it and make the best of it. They are gloriously poor 
while some other folk are hideously wealthy, and they 
smile with gentle indulgence upon the latter and bitter- 
ness does not enter their souls. 

When people can take an old and unattractive house, 
and make a Pansy Hill out of it, and when they remain 
kind and dignified and gracious through the hard daily 
test of contriving to make both ends meet, they are the 
real thing. The possession of money shields a great 
many men and women from having to take this test. 
Life is made so easy for them that they have no oppor- 
tunity to find out just how they would react if they 
were subjected to the acid test of insufficient means. 

Among the things that make the cities and towns of 
a new country so attractive are the energy and the 
initiative of the people who are making the prairie blos- 
som like a rose. The love of beauty and cleverness are 
made to take the place of much money, and some of the 
most charming places are the smallest and humblest of 
the town. The Pansy Hill idea, buttressed by fine char- 
acter and good taste, is working many a miracle, and 
as you ride through the streets, you feel this keenly and 
you are grateful that it is so. 

I like to think that the idea of good taste and char- 
acter is growing in our nation, and that the refinements 
of life count for a great deal more than the loose conduct 
and extravagance which have become too popular among 
us within the past few years. Customs may change, 
new laws may be passed, fashions may come and go, but 
our adjustment to everyday life always will remain our 
own particular and personal business. And if we are not 

31 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

able to realize ourselves in the places that we are, we 
will be a discordant people and our minds will be those 
of pettish children, who are continually crying for things 
they want that are out of their reach. 

A Pansy Hill is bound to be ten time^ more interest- 
ing than any mansion planned by a high-priced archi- 
tect and furnished by a high-priced decorator, for the 
personalities of its owners enter into it and become a 
part of it, in a way that no scientifically planned and 
made-to-order structure ever can be. And often there 
is more of the real home spirit in places that have been 
planned with love and beautified by sacrifice than in 
some of the million-dollar places which adorn our cities 
and towns. 

Some of our citizens will laugh at my Pansy Hill phil- 
osophy and call me ''sentimental". I shall not contra- 
dict them, for I also believe that a great many sensible 
women and brainy business men will agree with me 
about it. Am I wrong? 



32 




PERSONALITY IS THE KEY 

LBERT HUBBARD had one pet expression— it 
was "personality pins". In fact, Hubbard 
was the first man in this country persistently 
to preach the power of personality. His * ' Lit- 
tle Journeys" and his "Philistine" were brimming over 
with his observations on the influence wielded by per- 
sonal force and charm. 

What is personality? 

Nobody in this world has been able to take its meas- 
ure, or to lay down all the rules necessary for its culti- 
vation. You can't draw a diagram of personality, nor 
chart the limitless sea of its influence. 

"We do know this — that every genuinely superior man 
or woman is bound to be a personality. But God never 
duplicates. Each is different from the other. So, if you 
can actually decide what constitutes personality in one 
man, that will not do you much good in determining 
what it is or how it ought to operate in another. 

Men are like God — they create in their own image. 

If you conceive a great project, it is as Emerson says, 
the lengthened shadow of yourself. 

If you paint a portrait, you are bound to paint two, 
one of yourself and a second of the sitter. 

If you conceive a hero and set out to write his story, 
you will unconsciously tell your own while you are 
relating his. 

It makes little difference what you do, you will photo- 
graph yourself finally on the negative of your career. 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

There was a time when any honest, upright, sober, 
industrious citizen could make his way in this world with 
a fair and dependable degree of success. 

That time has passed— and added to a half dozen 
virtues and abilities, sufficient to furnish forth a very 
fair career, there must be today at least a half dozen 
more — and the greatest of this number is that of per- 
sonality. 

For every personality that is born, there are ten that 
are made — Shewed out of sheer intelligence, persistent 
effort, keen observation and patient practice. 

When we speak of the self-made man, we really mean 
a self-made personality. 

Many of us follow the slovenly habit of taking it for 
granted that we are just about all right, and that we will 
get through somehow as we are. This is the habit that 
accounts for mediocrity — it is the habit to which effi- 
ciency experts attribute 90 per cent of all failures, the 
one that explains why the majority are only 25 per cent 
as efficient as they might be. 

Educators are just beginning to realize that it is as 
necessary to instruct their pupils in the cultivation of 
efficient personality as it is to teach them a, b and c. 

For personality, or in other words, the power of per- 
suasion, is that which determines the character and 
color of our lives almost from the cradle. 

It is the strongest and most attractive personality in 
every family that receives the greatest favors, that is 
given the most advantages. 

As we grow up, personality begins to take effect in the 
school room. Through its influence and persuasion, we 
get on with our teachers, and we induce our playmates 

34 



PERSONALITY IS THE KEY 

to respect, not despise us. It is personality that per- 
suades men to seek out women and women to marry 
men. Personality is a large factor in the earning of our 
wages. Through personality we get desirable persons to 
accept our hospitality as well as to offer us theirs. It 
persuades our friends and neighbors to yield us consid- 
eration and social pleasure. Through personality we 
secure the best loyalty and the most valuable service. 

The man of personality binds other men to him with 
hoops of steel. He fires them with his own enthusiasm 
and fills them with his purpose. 

Personality, more than any one other force, has the 
power to purchase all the good things of life. Wealth 
is not amassed, social position is not attained, honor is 
not due, power does not flow, pleasure is not secured, and 
the happiness of a harmonious life is not realized in its 
fullness, except through the persuasion of personal force 
and charm. 

For personality is the key which opens every door. 

Yet, how few of us take the trouble to forge that in- 
strument ! 



35 




WIDOWERS: CAN THEY LOVE AGAIN? 

AN a woman who marries a widower hope to 
have real love from him", asks a reader, *'or 
has he only the warmed over kind to offer"? 
That depends entirely upon the individual. 
A very few men can love only once in their lives. The 
greater number, however, can love as long as life lasts. 

Every woman must be her own judge of how well a 
man loves her. Nobody else can tell her that. There 
is no reason, however, why she should have misgivings 
because her suitor is a widower. The second wife is 
usually better loved and better treated than the first. 
Where the first wife wore serge, the second wears silk. 
Though the first was expected to ''do her own work" 
uncomplainingly, the second wife must be served. While 
street cars are often good enough for first wives, their 
successors usually have automobiles. The differential is 
not necessarily due to the increased prosperity of the 
husband. The widower has discovered that it is possible 
for a man to lose a good wife. The husband seldom 
thinks of that. 

I once heard a very complacent ^\'ife say that the 
woman who marries a widower must not expect that he 
shall really love her; when she marries him she must 
reconcile herself to the remains of his heart. 

This type of women will not only spread this propa- 
ganda among other women — she will do her best to con- 
vince her husband, and all his friends, as well, being the 
kind of woman who not only demands all of a man's 
life while she is living, but all of his thoughts after she 
is dead. 

This reminds me of the story of a widower who mar- 
36 



WIDOWERS: CAN THEY LOVE AGAIN? 

ried a girl and took her to his home. Before the bride 
had removed her hat, the husband had the termerity to 
hand her a letter written by his first wife to be turned 
over to his second and read by her at the outset of her 
married life. The writer expressed the generous hope 
that her successor would make her husband very happy. 
There was not a definitely impolite or unkind line in it ; 
yet it was so constructed that every word conveyed a 
sting. Can you imagine a more subtle revenge for a 
dying wife to take upon the unsuspecting woman who 
might some day take her place? 

One of the severest trials that confronts a woman 
marrying a widower and one that she must keep locked 
up in the innermost recesses of her soul is having to 
look daily into the eyes of little children that reflect 
neither her husband's nature nor her own. It is a noble, 
high-minded and unselfish woman who makes up her 
mind and holds to her decision that the children of a 
former wife shall be treated as tenderly as if they were 
her own, that she never will be revenged upon the dead 
by striking at the living descendant of a former wife. I 
am convinced that the chief reason whj^ most step- 
mothers are so hard upon their stepchildren is their im- 
pulse to take revenge upon the woman who has gone be- 
fore. If it be true that the spirits of the dead are aware 
of the thoughts, the purposes and acts of the living, what 
anguish, what sufferings must be those of a mother, who 
with the greater understanding of the immortal, can see 
her children being punished for her sake ! It is also a 
very severe tax upon a woman's generosity to take up 
her abode in a house that has been arranged by an- 
other woman's hands. It may be that her courage will 
be tested by the portrait of the first Mrs. A. hanging 

37 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

upon the v/all. If she ventures into any of the darker 
corners of attic or store-room she may find the first wife's 
wedding veil, perhaps a picture of husband and wife 
taken on the day of their wedding, the baby pictures of 
their children, and most trying of all, momentoes and 
letters of their early love. 

The middle-aged widower who woos and wins a 
younger woman is tremendously proud of himself. His 
success is a forai of self-vindication that every man past 
his first youth craves. It is tantamount to his saying to 
the world of his acquaintances, "You see that even 
though I am not as young as I once was, I am still a very 
attractive man. This younger woman has fallen in love 
with me which proves that I still am something of a 
romantic figure". 

Wives, that is some of them, have an aggravating way 
of trying to convince their husbands that if they should 
be made widowers, they might be accepted for their 
money, their good dispositions, or other practical and 
material reasons, though they never again will be mar- 
ried for love. While no man ever wholly accepts this 
theory, he often is tormented with doubt and uncertainty 
until, after a decent period of mourning, he can once 
more enter the lists and tilt a lance in the arena of love. 

In the last analysis the man's temperament is the 
deciding factor. There are men like Mark Lennan in 
Galworthy's "The Dark Flovv^r" who are capable of 
developing a high-class attack of the grand passion 
several times in their lives. It is this type of man, made 
widower, who after his deepest wounds of grief and loss 
are healed, will fall desperately in love and who will lead 
the object of his fervid, if not very youthful affection, 
up the aisle of the church. 

38 




WHO IS THE GREATEST WOMAN? 

HO is the greatest woman in the world? Some- 
body answers, Sarah Bernhardt, that gallant 
woman of France, for whom age does not exist, 
nor fear, nor sorrow. 

Another will say Jane Addams, w^ho has created a 
whole world of new ideas through Hull House. There 
might be a thousand votes cast in a ''greatest woman" 
contest for the unsullied spirit of Maude Adams, who 
can lift you out of your workaday self into a wonderful 
inner world of romance; for Edith Wharton, that su- 
premely great writing genius; for Amelita Galli-Curci, 
w^ho has astonished the world with her nightingale voice. 
Yet who can say that any of these women are actually 
greater than thousands of other women of great deeds, 
great talents and great character w^ho live and die un- 
known and unsung? 

If there is one woman entitled to decoration for brave 
service on the battlefield of life it is the kind, good, in- 
telligent and dutiful woman about whom no one outside 
a very small circle ever hears. She may not have great 
beauty or genius to her credit, yet she may have some- 
thing just as good. 

This ordinary woman — that is what I will call her, be- 
cause she is found everywhere — does not write a book, 
sing in opera nor is she decorated for distinguished 
service. 

Her life history is singularly uneventful, not to her, 
of course, but to the outside world. Once upon a time 
this ordinary woman had all the freshness and beauty of 

39 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

youth. She dreamed her dreams like other women, and 
part of those dreams did come true. That is to say, a 
certain gallant young person (we will call him the 
prince) told her the most fascinating story in the world. 
He told her how she, just an ordinary maiden, was to 
be a princess ; how she should be shielded from want and 
care, and how she would be rapturously loved all the 
days of her life. 

The prospect was very enchanting. Without hesita- 
tion she put her hand in that of the prince, and they 
started out to see and learn life together. And life 
was very beautiful for awhile, until the prince forgot to 
kiss her as he came and went. The need of money de- 
pressed their spirits. He never took her out to dinner 
or a play — they could not afford that. 

With none of those delightful, inspiring experiences 
which punctuate the days of the world's famous women 
the ordinary woman went right on uncomplainingly from 
week to week, from month to month, from year to year, 
sewing and mending and cooking and cleaning. She 
did love pretty things, for somehow all women with 
souls do love them. But the children were growing up 
and must be educated. She must work a little harder 
and deny herself a little more. ''Anything for their 
sweet sakes", she always said with a smile, for they were 
young and they must have their chance. 

Sometimes she would look at her work-worn hands and 
suppress a sigh when she recalled the rapturous love of 
the prince, now a sober and grizzled man. Though her 
step had lost its buoyancy, he was not so ready to guide 
her over the sligtest roughness in the road. She would 
have loved that little lift more than ever. Not that she 

40 



WHO IS THE GREATEST WOMAN? 

really felt the need of it, for, despite her frail physique, 
she seemed with the passing years to have gathered a 
wonderful strength. 

Oh, the world is so full of these ordinary women ! 
Their lives are brightened with so few gaieties. They 
are strangers to those iridescent pleasures that color the 
lives of their sister-women who have beauty, wealth, 
fame and success. There is nothing so essentially 
feminine as the longing for admiration. Those who re- 
ceive it flourish like a bay tree, and those who are de- 
prived of their woman's birthright suffer a certain in- 
evitable starvation. It is a slow starvation, but it is 
sure. 

The ordinary, good, dutiful woman who deserves the 
most usually receives the fewest flowers. Her devoted 
service is taken for granted. It is nothing more than a 
matter of course. We know that the machinery will 
come to a stop if she is not there to keep it going. But 
who considers that until she is gone? Because she does 
keep it going, whether or not her effort is remarked ; be- 
cause she labors incessantly without hope of praise or 
much reward, she is the one real heroine. 

All great women actresses, artists, writers, scientists 
and reformers notwithstanding, the ordinary, good, kind, 
dutiful woman is, when all's said and done, the great- 
est woman in the world. 



41 




FAITH AND ITS MIRACLES 

ER head drooped wearily and her voice had a 
hollow sound as she said, ' ' I have lost faith in 
everything and everybody." One whom she 
had trusted implicitly had defrauded her of 
her hard-earned and pitifully small gains. 

At the moment she thought she had lost faith, but she 
had not. She simply could not have meant what she 
said. To live without faith is an impossibility. It 
would mean to go insane or to die. 

Little do we realize it, but the majority of our acts 
are based on faith. 

You get up in the morning with faith that your wife 
will have breakfast on the table in plenty of time for 
you to eat it and get down to your work. 

You board the street car with faith that the motor- 
man and conductor will take you safely through the 
streets to your store, factory or office, or if you happen 
to own the good things that morey can buy, you step 
into your motor car. You make the trip with faith that 
your chauffeur will drive you through the streets and 
land you safely at your destination. 

You go into your place of business with faith in your 
associates to ''carry on" with you, with faith in your 
employer, if you belong to the salaried or wage-earn- 
ing class. You work six days without a cent of pay, for 
you have perfect faith in your employer's ability to 
pay you on the seventh and in his integrity. You have 
faith in your ability to accomplish the task that is set 
before you, and you ought to have faith enough to do 
that which you never have attempted before. 

42 



FAITH AND ITS MIRACLES 

Nobody ever has defined faith so accnratel}' as Paul, 
who in writing his epistle to the Hebrews, said : '* Faith 
is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of 
things not seen" 

The best part of life is made up of things that we 
hope for, of desiring things which we cannot see. 

Would we ever have had a single oil well if it had not 
been for the steadfast faith of certain men? 

No man ever saw the oil down in the earth until he 
drilled and brought it to the surface. No man ever 
knew it was there. When a man drills deep and strikes 
the pa}^ sand, and the oil gushes forth and blackens the 
derrick, that, indeed, is *'the substance of things hoped 
for"; it is ''the evidence of things not seen". 

Who must have more faith than the farmer ? Would 
he plant a crop unless he had faith in the orderly course 
of the seasons, in the rains of spring, in the ripening suns 
of summer, in the harvest of fruit and grain as a reward 
for his labors ? For months the farmer has no income, no 
visible reward for his strenuous labors, but he works on 
almost from sun to sun, with faith that he will reap as 
he sowed. 

W^hat woman would walk to the altar, by that one act 
putting her whole future life in the hands of the man she 
loves, if she did not have infinite faith in him? What 
man would assume the responsibility of caring for one 
woman for a life-time, if when he asked her to marry 
him, he had not perfect faith in her? 

Every invention which has contributed to the world's 
progress and advancement is the materialization of faith. 
Unbounded faith built the first steamboat. It made the 
telephone and telegraph possible. It constructed the 

43 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

first automobile and it gave us the flying-machine. Of 
course, faith without effort or performance, comes to 
nothing. Men and women who fold their hands and sit 
down to wait, like old Wilkins Micawber, for something 
"to turn up" are doomed to disappointment. You can- 
not conjure things into being done or happening. Faith 
has no affinity for the lazy man. 

Faith is force. Faith is power. Active faith makes 
possible the impossible. For those who both labor and 
believe, it works miracles every day. 



44 




APPRECIATION AS A GIFT 

HAT does your birthday mean to you! Is it a 
season for receiving or giving? Does it re- 
mind you to be thankful for the gift of life, so 
thankful that you want to make it a time for 
rejoicing, or do you feel like forgetting that there is 
such a day in the year's calendar? 

Did you ever hear of a woman who makes her birth- 
day a day for giving, rather than receiving? 

There is such an one in the world. For many years 
she has observed a custom of spending the greater part 
of the day, although she is a busy mother, giving happi- 
ness to others by writing letters to oldtime friends and 
near relatives. She makes a point of recalling in these 
letters happy memories, of telling the recipients of the 
beautiful thoughts she has had of them. Here is a para- 
graph taken from one of these letters, written by her to a 
much-loved aunt: 

*' My mind is flooded with sweet memories of all the 
years. Distinctly tinging the waves of this gentle tide, 
adding warmth and color and all things lovely, are my 
thoughts of you. I remember you as a happy school 
girl with wonderful braids of hair. I remember you 
grown older, casting shy glances at the boys, and buy- 
ing your first pair of kid gloves — do you remember that ? 
I remember you in the grace and beauty of your young 
womanhood. I remember you in the old fashioned 
ivory and gold parlor; remember you at the piano and 
also at the organ — it seemed wonderful to me that you 
should have both. Most of all I remember you on in- 

45 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

numerable occasions when you passed good things to eat 
at our children's gatherings. I remember when you 
came running down the steps to meet us when we came 
to you on your wedding day and how you looked then, 
rosy-cheeked, so full of life and so daintily clothed. Do 
you recall the apron you wore? It was sheer white or- 
gandie, prettily rui!led, the ruffles featherstitched with 
gay zephyr, as was the fashion just then. I remember 
you down through all the j'-ears, always constant and 
true, always my ideal of perfect womanhood. You have 
never guessed the hundredth part of what j^ou have been 
to me, I am sure." 

Imagine the happiness that must have come to the 
aunt who received this exquisite letter, penned by a niece 
who wrote to express her gratitude for the hours they 
had spent together. How she must have glowed as she 
read those pages of charming appreciation. Yet, how 
few of us ever experience the joy of receiving such a 
letter, or better still, of writing one. Yet, the very 
poorest among us have both friends and kinfolk who have 
exercised a gracious influence over our lives, and to 
whom we might very well express the gratitude that 
we ought to feel. How happy they might be made by a 
letter of delicate appreciation ! Of course we all think 
these beautiful things about our friends and relatives. 
Too often, however, we keep such thoughts bottled up 
within us instead of pouring them out, a libation to 
friendship or affection. Some of us believe ourselves to 
be too busy to write our thoughts, and many of us are 
too reticent to express what we feel. 

Nothing gives more pleasure to men and women who 
are growing old than to have the successes and triumphs 

46 



if. 

I 



APPRECIATION AS A GIFT. 

of the past recalled to them. A man who has passed the 
zenith of his powers and activities delights in being re- 
minded of his past achievements, and a woman adores 
being told how lovely she looked in a certain costume 
or how charming she was on a particular occasion when 
she was the center of interest. 

What a beautiful plan of happiness for the older peo- 
ple it would be if we would celebrate our birthdays, or 
some other holiday, for that matter, by telling our most 
beloved friends and relatives what they have meant to 
us. I know a son who on his birthday writes to his 
mother in just that way. He tells her how thankful he 
is to be living. So it is with all her children. Is it sur- 
prising that she keeps health and vigor and vivacit}^ at 
almost four score years? 

Love is the greatest of all beauty secrets and the most 
perfect panacea for ill-health. When you see men, 
women and children with a blighted look in their faces, 
nine times out of ten it is because they are leading love- 
less lives — that is, they neither give love nor receive it. 

You sometimes wonder why it is that actors and 
actresses, great singers, men and women famous for their 
achievements keep their youth so long. It is because 
they continually are inspired by praise and apprecia- 
tion. Does not this simple fact contain an every-day-in- 
the-year birthday hint for each one of us? 



47 




"DANGEROUS AGE" IN MEN 

OME years ago a Danish woman, Karin Mich- 
aelis, wrote a volume of confessions that was 
as startlingly intimate and personal as the con- 
fessions of Saint Augustin, Benvenuto Cellini 
or Jean Jacques Rousseau. The vogue for this book, 
''The Dangerous Age" was phenomenal. It was trans- 
lated into a score of languages and a hundred editions 
of it were sold. The world was amazed by the writer's 
revelations. She declared that the most dangerous 
epoch of a women's life was that which lies between 35 
and 40. It was then, said Karin Michaelis, that woman 
is most sorely tempted. It is then that she is most likely 
to become the dupe of her emotions. The perils of youth, 
she told us, were as nothing compared with those of 
middle age. 

A few months after the book was published, the phase, 
''dangerous age" became a byword. Middle-aged fem- 
inine emotions were coldly laid on the dissecting table 
and they were quite as ruthlessly analyzed. Strangely 
enough, nobody in all these years has guessed that man, 
too, has his dangerous age. Sometimes it comes upon 
him as early as 40. Sometimes it arrives as late as 55. 
However it may time its arrival, its advent is after he 
has passed years of struggle and when he begins to real- 
ize commercial or professional success. With his sons go- 
ing into business, his daughters married, or off to col- 
lege and his wife absorbed in society, clubs, charity or 
suffrage, he begins to sit back and take his ease. Then, 
it is that the old spirit of adventure begins to assert 
itself, and he revolts against the routine that he has 
faithfully followed for many years. He sees that his 

48 



'' DANGEROUS AGE IN MEN 

wife has sought and seemingly has found release and re- 
lief from the routine of household responsibility in a 
variety of outside interests. In his growing restless- 
ness he wonders what pleasures and opportunities life 
may hold for him in these, his riper years. One day, he 
is surprised to discover that youthful beauty has a new 
poignant charm for him, and that he is strangely eager 
to revive the stirring emotions of his youth. Of course, 
he loves his home and his wife as much, perhaps better 
than he ever did. Yet, he suspects that he may not have 
had his share of pleasure, and he recalls with a good 
deal of satisfaction how as a young man, he patiently 
bowed his head under the yoke of struggle, privation 
and industry. Does not his youthful sacrifices to duty 
entitle him to a certain compensation in his later years? 

The woman who reaches middle age only to discover 
a great and aching void in her life is a touching and 
familiar figure. The ninety-and-nine among these 
women find surcease from their restlessness in club life, 
society, philanthropy and more recently, in polities. It 
is only the one who forgets her obligation to her family, 
her position in society, her influence for good as a 
woman, and who ventures forth on the primrose path. 

When a man arrives at the dangerous age it is harder 
for him who has not so many restraining influences 
thrown around him, not to break down the barriers and 
go forth and loot the world. 

When men marry in their early twenties or thirties, 
so many tender things tie them to their homes, their 
love of their little and helpless children, the delight of 
seeing those children grow, their eagerness to provide 
for them handsomel}^, their devotion to their still youth- 

49 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

fully charming wives. But, in middle age when those 
same children have gone away to school or have married, 
when their ideals have paled perceptibly, when their 
wives, beloved though they are, no longer hold for them 
a romantic interest, temptations that they once spurned 
angrily, begin to appear in an alluring light. 

It is a peculiar peril that besets men at the zenith of 
their careers. With leisure and wealth and opportunity, 
one sees them renewing their interest in society and ac- 
quiring an unwonted fastidiousness in dress. They will 
not admit it as freely as women, but the approach of age 
is to them quite as fearsome a thing. There are hours 
when life is to them as a gray symphony, and they ask, 
''What can the future hold for me?" 

But, the very next moment, the most disenchanted of 
men will assure himself that he never felt better, was 
never younger. It is in middle life, he reminds himself, 
that men write their greatest books, their sweetest songs 
and their finest poems. It is in middle life that men ex- 
press themselves in great commercial enterprises, that 
they make their best laws, devise their most wonderful 
inventions and achieve their largest liberties. Then, 
why should they not long for youth's splendid visions? 
Why should not the fog-bank be made glorious for them 
by the moonlight, even as it was for Romeo? 

And so they pass into middle life, or the dangerous 
age, tortured by that now-or-never prospect. Most of 
them get through it safely. And the others ? They grasp 
the cup of golden elixir that is to make all life glorious. 
For a time it sets their pulses throbbing. It seems to 
restore youth's un jaded freshness of sensation. Then, 
one day the cup cloys, and its bitter-sweet contents turn 
to ashes on their lips. 

50 




USES OF AMIABILITY 

OOKING through a table of contents in a book 
written to help men and women who aspire to 
successful living, I find no less than seventy sub- 
jects exhaustively treated, such as ^'The Man 
and the Opportunity", ''Concentrated Energy", ''What 
a Good Appearance Will Do", "A Fortune in Good 
Manners", "The Self Improvement Habit", and so on, 
ad infinitum. Not a word does the author say about a 
good disposition and what an important factor it is in 
the making of a happy and successful life. 

It seems to me that we do not lay enough stress upon 
the importance of cultivating a good disposition, nor 
do we always appreciate what it means in our homes, in 
business, or in social life. I have heard men and women 
speak slightingly of a good disposition, as if any fool 
could have one, as if the fine quality of amiability be- 
longed to simpletons and weaklings. Nothing could be 
a greater fallacy. With all the irritations and troubles 
and disappointments that comes to us in the course of 
our careers, it requires character to keep a sunny, 
amiable disposition, and strength of purpose and self- 
control. Any fool can lose his temper at slight provoca- 
tion. Any clay-footed mortal can pout and have a fit 
of sulks. Any congenitally weak creature can fret and 
scold and live in a perpetual state of ill-humor. But 
"he that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; 
and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city ' '. 
One of the greatest of the underlying causes of child 
delinquency is a bad disposition in the home. Chil- 

51 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

dren who are reared in homes where the atmosphere is 
charged with anger, where the parents continually are 
hurling ugly epithets at each other, where there is fight- 
ing and quarreling and back-biting and bickering, have 
not the shadow of a chance to grow up with good dis- 
positions. With an example of quarrelsomeness always 
before them, with irritability always in the air, they nat- 
urally assume that such is the normal condition of fam- 
ily existence, and they grow up, following in the foot- 
steps of their parents, perhaps to establish homes of 
their own. Through them the quarrelsome spirit often 
is perpetuated from generation to generation, until one, 
better and wiser than the others, strikes out in a saner 
and better way. 

You wonder why so many young people who have 
comfortable homes are so eager to be "going", why they 
never are content to sta}^ at home longer than it is neces- 
sary to eat and sleep. A good many of those restless 
young people are driven away by sullenness and quar- 
reling. They cannot endure the angry looks that are ex- 
changed by their parents, or the sharp words that pass 
between the woman they call ''Mother" and the man 
they call ''Father". Home becomes a horror to them. 
No wonder they foregather in the dance-hall. No won- 
der they go joy-riding and wander around until after 
midnight, when they can hope to go home and find the 
house still. It is perfectly natural that they should 
make their escape as soon and as often as possible, and 
that they should spend as much time as possible away 
from the place they call home, but v/hich is no home, 
at all. Many of the wretched mistakes that are being 
made by the younger generation are directly traceable 

52 



USES OF AMIABILITY 

to the hideous dispositions of parents Avho have driven 
their children into the street, and many a criminal in 
our penitentiaries is the inevitable product of homes 
that were fairly torn asunder by quarreling during- the 
formative years of their lives. 

One of the infallible indications of refinement is a 
good disposition and one of the plainest marks of ''com- 
monness" is the habit of quarreling and sharp speak- 
ing, of nagging and complaining and fault-finding. To 
cultivated minds, a bad disposition is an unfailing 
symptom of vulgarity. Did you ever notice how "com- 
mon" people speak to those they consider their inferiors? 
Did you ever listen while the vulgar newly-rich give 
their orders in Pullman cars, cafes or hotel dining 
rooms? Did you ever observe how the "common" 
mother speaks to her children, how the "common" man 
addresses his wife? Did you ever notice on the con- 
trary how men and women of cultivated natures and 
good dispositions speak with the utmost politeness to 
their children, to their servants and to such other per- 
sons whose social status may not be quite as high as their 
own? 

The charm of a home where the heads of the family 
have amiable dispositions is unfailing, and children 
reared in such an atmosphere go out into the world, their 
battle half won. Men and women who rule their own 
spirits are ready to meet all classes of people and all 
conditions in life. They are prepared for emergencies, 
and unlike those of unruly tempers, who go to pieces at 
the slightest provocation, they overcome a thousand ob- 
stacles and they disarm their adversaries before the 
latter know what has been done. 

53 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

We think a great deal about cultivating our minds, 
and we spend years in the development of a certain tal- 
ent we may have. But, how many of us think enough 
about cultivating our dispositions? How many women 
give serious and systematic thought to the training of 
their natures? A good many — yes, but not enough. 
How many men make a point of always speaking kindly 
and amiably and politely to their wives, of keeping be- 
fore their children the model of a good disposition ? We 
wish there were more than there are. 

A fine disposition protects one from a great deal of 
unpleasantness. It raises a sort of friendly barrier be- 
tween you and some other person's irritability. It wards 
off many a sharp word and stinging sally. Irritable peo- 
ple often are ashamed to "show themselves" before finer 
natures, and the soft answer turns away wrath. 



54 




THE EMOTIONAL TEMPERAMENT 

HAT the emotional temperament is a danger- 
ous temperament, that it is responsible for 
most of the disasters from which the human 
race has suffered", that emotional persons are 
by nature untruthful, that they are cowards and can- 
not bear pain, that being creatures of impulse, they are 
generally blunderers, is the startling assertion made by 
an English physician, writing in the London Hospital. 
These emotional persons are more numerous than they 
used to be, says the doctor, a fact that does not augur 
well, he believes, for the future of the human race. 

How this writer must feel the burden of his mortality ! 
How slowly must his heart beat! How cold, how slug- 
gishly must his blood run! How bleak must be his 
laughter, if, indeed, he can laugh at all ! How cramped 
must be his existence, how narrow his vision! Surely 
no man who happens to read this indictment of the emo- 
tional temperament will be depressed by it, for the 
physician who must be a humdrum creature, is psycho- 
logically incorrect. 

What are the phenomena of the mind? Are they not 
cognition, emotion and volition, or thought, feeling and 
will ? Do not the emotions comprise feelings of restraint 
as well as freedom ? Do they not include wonder, terror, 
love, hate, self-complacency, the sense of power, love of 
knowledge, the artistic feelings, the moral sense and a 
score of others too numerous for mention here? What 
incomplete and uninteresting creatures would we be if 
our only mental functions were cognition and volition. 
We would be dry as dust. 

55 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

Nothing worth while was ever accomplished in this 
world without the stimulus of emotion. Emotional feel- 
ing of a high order has been the basis of all philanthropic 
enterprise just as that of a base order inspired the 
Spanish inquisition. All artists, writers, musicians, in- 
ventors and orators are emotional. Poetry is a beautiful 
and rhythmical way of expressing emotion. 

All great men and women are highly emotional, how- 
ever self -controlled they may be. In fact, it is only the 
fool or the mentally defective who permits his emotions 
to run away with him. 

The English like to assume that they are an unemo- 
tional people. They are, it is true, a reticent people, and 
restrained. If, indeed, they were unemotional, they 
could not have produced century after century much of 
the world's greatest literature. 

To assert that emotional people are by nature un- 
truthful is to be guilty of an absurdity. It takes an 
emotional person, not only to see and understand things, 
but to express them truly. As for saying that the emo- 
tional man is a coward — what about those magnificent 
young warrioi's of ours, those young enthusiasts who 
scorned trenches and trench fighting, who going into the 
open, swept everything before them, a singing, laugh- 
ing, whistling horde, and carried away by valorous emo- 
tion, plunged on until they brought the Huns to their 
knees? 

The world would be standing today just where it stood 
after the creation, if it had not been for the power of 
emotion. What is achievement unless it be emotion 
translated into fact? ''Trust your emotions", says 
Emerson. "Leave your theory as Joseph did his coat 

56 



THE EMOTIONAL TEMPERAMENT 

in the hands of the harlot, and flee'\ And he goes on to 
warn us that a foolish consistency is the ''hobgoblin of 
little minds", and he tells us that with consistency a 
great soul can have nothing to do. 

It is easy to believe that the English conmentator on 
human emotions has stifled all of his. If one could 
know him intimately, I suspect one would find him to 
be one of those lugubrious persons who thinks life a 
poor thing, at best. One would likely discover, too, that 
he was almost insensible to pleasure, that his standard 
of morals was utilitarian, that he considered feeling a 
proper thing for blame, never for praise. 

Emotion keeps the world on the move. It is the life 
of the soul. Allowed to run riot, and without the guid- 
ance of the will, it can ruin either an individual or a 
nation. Russia is an example of emotional chaos, just 
as was the French revolution. But properly controlled 
and directed, emotion builds temples. It invents the 
wireless and the airplane. It writes all the greatest 
books and poems. It composes the divinest music, and 
it wins the mightiest battles. Emotion can do one of two 
things to a man — make him a fool or a god. 



§7 




CULT OF SIMPLICITY 

UEEN MARY, we read lately, issued an edict, 
abolishing the heavy, ponderous court costume 
which has held the socially elect in sartorial 
bondage for many generations past. No more 
will damsels and dowagers, presented to Her Majesty, 
be compelled to drag after them yards upon yards of 
heavy trains and walk backward into their treacherous 
folds. No longer will their coiffures be burdened with 
plumes. What a shock this setting aside of a time- 
honored precedent may be to the shade of Queen Victoria 
who, during her reign would not relax a ceremonial even 
to the crossing of a T or the dotting of an I, we can only 
imagine, for when the late monarch once made a law it 
was to be for yesterday, today and forever, and nobody 
ever dreamed of a change. 

Throughout the civilized world Queen Mary will be 
applauded for her decision in favor of greater simplicity. 
In fact, simplicity is the keynote struck by aristocracy 
everywhere. Ostentation is taken to be a sign of vul- 
garity, the displa}^ of the newly rich. 

The orgy of gorgeous dressing, semi-nudity and extra- 
vagant display of the past few years has caused a re- 
action in favor of all things that are beautiful in their 
simplicity. 

In my childhood it was a distinction to wear dia- 
monds. It is no distinction today. Diamonds are now 
being worn so commonly and by so many ignorant and 
vulgar persons that they have lost much of their charm. 
Instead of being reserved for wear upon ceremonial or, 

58 



CULT OF SIMPLICITY 

at least, semi-ceremonial occasions, you see them dis- 
played indiscriminately in the morning and on the 
plainest of gowns. It is no uncommon sight to see a 
diamond and platinum bar-pin five inches long, set with 
thousands of dollars worth of precious stones adorning 
the plainest of serge frocks. 

In this day, it seems that the only way to be con- 
spicuous is to be inconspicuous, and the truest way to 
be elegant is to be simple almost to excess. Therefore, 
you see men and women of good breeding and position 
avoiding the very things that people who have neither, 
must have at any cost. 

The words and the acts of certain men and women 
who have lately acquired money are adding much to the 
gaiety of nations, while at the same time they are causing 
a powerful revulsion of feeling against all forms of os- 
tentation and displaj^ 

When the census taker approached a certain woman 
and going through the usual formalities, asked, '^what 
is your occupation?" the woman, drawing herself up 
with a great show of indignation, replied, ''Why, we 
belong to the idle rich ! ' ' Idleness and riches affording 
her as they did an entirely new set of experiences, she 
was very eager to have it known that she did not belong 
to the class that toils and spins that it may eat. 

"The art of art, the glory of expression and the sun- 
shine of the light of letters is simplicity," Walt Whit- 
man tells us in his preface to "Leaves of Grass." It is 
a commonplace with us that the greatest persons always 
are the simplest, that true worth feels under no necessity 
to call attention to itself. It is the shallow person who 
always is trying to impress you with his superiority. 

59 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

''You shall stand by my side and look in the mirror 
with me" — is the very essence of simplicity. All heroic 
figures walk at their ease and without strut or flourish. 
Their only pride is the measureless pride of the soul. 

You enter a house and you wonder why it is so won- 
derfully pleasing to you. That is because of its simplic- 
ity. You look at a woman and you exclaim, ''what an 
exquisite toilette ! ' ' The secret of it ? Simplicity, again. 

We are beginning to see all over the world a new trend 
toward simplicity. This v/as predicted generally as a 
reaction from the war. Now we know that the war was 
only a secondary cause of this growing love for things 
that are real and simple, the primary cause being the 
revolt of the best people against the absurdities of the 
nouveau riches, who dressed up in marvelous grandeur, 
have no place to go. 



60 




MARRIAGE: WHY MEN FAIL 

OME time ago, a judge in the superior court of 
Chicago handed in his resignation, saying that 
he was ''sick and tired of hearing divorce 
cases" and adding the dismal note that "mar- 
riage does not mean anything anymore". 

This remark must have been made in a mood of pro- 
found pessimism, for marriage means just as much as it 
ever did. It means love and home and children ' and 
companionship, however frequently parties to the mar- 
riage contract may fail ignominiously. And for the 
very i^eason that marriage, as an institution, means the 
deepest and most beautiful things in this life, everybody 
is intensely interested in marriage, why in the present 
it so often is a failure, and how it may be made a suc- 
cess. For the veiy reason that the world loves love and 
the lover, the world finds in marriage, an inexhaustible 
source of discussion and speculation. This discussion, 
I believe to be one of the healthiest and most encouraging 
signs of the times. For, as we discover the obscurer 
causes for marriage failing of its best purposes, we 
should see our way to making it a much happier and 
more satisfactory human institution than it ever has 
been in the past. 

First of the subtler causes of failure in marriage on 
the part of man is selfishness. Because he is man, the 
superior sex, everybody must bow to his desires, whether 
they be good or bad. Such a man usually has had a 
foolish mother, a woman who has believed that nothing 
in the world was good enough for her little tin god of a 

61 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

son. Naturally enough, he grows up with the idea of 
exploiting women, first lights of love, then a Avife. This 
type of man always can be detected by a glance at his 
wife who invariably is a cowed creature, lack-luster, 
dispirited and old long before her time. In former days 
women of broken hearts and broken bodies went down to 
their graves for their selfish spouses. Now, they get a 
divorce. 

Second in importance is the money question. It is a 
very phlegmatic and obtuse woman who is not sensitive 
over the division of money. Too many families have no 
definite money policy. There is no regular allowance for 
household expenses, no sum set aside for the wife's 
private purse. Instead of the husband and wife going 
over their accounts the first of each month in an amicable 
and business-like manner, and planning what extra ex- 
penses may be undertaken in the month to come, there 
often is blaming and scolding on the part of the husband 
and tears and recriminations from the wife. As an 
aftermath, the wife broods over her hated economic de- 
pendence and the tyranny of male man. If the husband 
would take his wife into his confidence, provide for her 
certain spending privileges, then make her feel that his 
money was her money, to be properly used and sanely 
conserved, there would be far fewer discontented, restive 
women, and fewer cases in the divorce courts. 

All women are hungry for love. Too often the rap- 
tures of the honeymoon speedily deteriorate into the 
stereotyped kiss of farewell and greeting, and after a 
few months, a few years, the wife stretches out the arms 
of her affection, only to draw them back empty again. 
Her husband is too busy, too much occupied to make love 

62 



MARRIAGE : WHY MEN FAIL 

to her. Then sometimes, I suspect, it may be the very 
creature comforts of marriage that kill romance in the 
husband's heart. 

One of the commonest mistakes of husbands is their 
forgetfulness of good manners. It is marital laziness 
rather than ignorance or innate selfishness which makes 
a man neglectful of little courtesies when he is once 
comfortably settled in married life. It is incomprehen- 
sible to a sensitive woman that a man who never forgets 
to be courteous to her in the street may be by no means 
considerate in private life. She cannot understand why 
marriage should change a man's outward attitude of 
chivalry. He always may be patient and gracious when 
she asks a favor of him. But what a woman longs to 
have done for her is the thing for which she has not 
specially asked. It would be very sweet to her if occa- 
sionally he would offer to carry the baby up to bed, if 
he would open the door for her, or place a comfortable 
chair for her, or adjust the curtain' to shade her eyes. 

We are always reading in advice-to-wives columns that 
a wife always must be neat and attractive in her hus- 
band's presence, that her dress must be immaculate and 
that she must be as fragrant as a rose. Why is it that so 
little is said about a husband's physical attractiveness? 
Is it of no importance to his wife ? Many heartbreaking 
letters have come to me from wives who abhorred their 
husband's slovenliness, who were hurt and humiliated 
beyond expression by their husband's aversion for reg- 
ular and frequent ablutions and the latter 's willingness 
to wear dirty, spotted, unpressed clothes. It is just as 
distasteful to a fastidious woman to view an unshaven, 
unkempt husband in a dingy bathrobe and run-down-at- 

63 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

the heel slippers as it is to a husband to look at his wife 
with a neglected skin, hair done up in curlers and wear- 
ing a faded kimono that properly belongs in a rag-bag. 
Women can institute comparisons quite as well as men 
can, and what is more, they do. 

Thousands of American husbands of the better class 
who are good to their wives in the sense that they are 
kind to them and provide well for them, are indifferent 
to their women-folk. They are proud of their wives, but 
they are uninterested in them, in a strictly personal 
sense. They are playing a tremendous game, and the 
stakes are enormous, for in this country a man must 
either win or he must fail. You hear it said that men 
make their business their life because women demand it. 
Indirectly, the women may be responsible, but actually 
it is the pace of the country itself. Our men are gen- 
erous, and they like to see their women ''have every- 
thing in the world". The result is that they often are 
more absorbed in the process by which they are enabled 
to give their women everything than they are in the 
women themselves. 

"With W. L. George I believe that a great many men 
might be model husbands if the}^ were not married. 
There are times when the terrible respectability of mar- 
riage palls upon the male creature, and he feels that he 
somehow must break through, if only to assure himself 
that he is not in bondage for life. The recrudescence of 
the romantic spirit in middle life or shortly thereafter is 
another common cause of failure, even after many years 
of conjugal tranquility. 



64 



^ 



MARRIAGE: WHY WOMEN FAIL 

ARRIAGE is still the great beginning, even now 
as it Avas with Adam and Eve. After thou- 
sands of years of human experience, it is sub- 
ject to much the same conditions, and it is con- 
fronted with almost the same perils it encountered 6,000 
years ago. Adam and Eve, you remember, passed their 
honeymoon in the Garden of Eden, and all their life 
thereafter, among the tliorns of the wilderness. The chief 
difference between marriage as we know it today and 
marriage as it was experienced by our first father and 
mother is the difference between georgette crepe and fig 
leaves, between a mansion filled with period furniture 
and taking up one's abode under the shelter of a rock, 
between eating of the tree of know^ledge and dining off 
roast capon and Romaine lettuce with salad oil. In other 
words, time has changed only the outward and artificial 
conditions, human nature having remained much the 
same. It is still a struggle, calling for the exhibition 
of the very best in human nature. It means larger free- 
dom and greater responsibilities, and where the man 
and the woman so live that the next generation shall be 
a little better, the advancing years mean but a climax, 
and age a rich harvest of memories. 

Sometimes I wish that the wedding ring might have 
inscribed in it the motto of the Prince of Wales, ''Ich 
dien" (I serve) so that when w^omen enter into marriage 
they might be readier to accept it, not as a state of servi- 
tude, but an opportunity for service of the finest and 
noblest kind. When a man marries, it is with the hope 

65 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

and expectation of having a home made for him com- 
mensurate with his means. Thousands of men in all 
classes, the clerk class as well as the capitalist class are 
.exasperated when they discover that their wives cannot 
or will not face the duties of wifehood and motherhood, 
because they expect to be kept in semi-idleness, to be 
petted and pampered and waited upon either by servants 
or their men-folk. They are disgusted when they find 
their women cannot or will not put a palatable meal on 
the table, that they cannot or will not sweep and dust 
a room competently, make a garment, darn or mend. 
Such a disclosure is frightfully discouraging to a man 
unless he has almost unlimited sums of money, and not 
many men are so well off. No woman should become a 
party to a marriage contract unless she will face the sit- 
uation honestly and say to herself, "I have undertaken 
to serve this man and to make him a home. It is up to 
me to create order and comfort, harmony, happiness and 
security, and if I cannot do that, I will not have earned 
a faithful husband and all the good things of this life. ' ' 
Happiness is not a purchasable commodity. The 
American idea that "money makes the mare go" is re- 
sponsible for many of our social and political ills. The 
idea started some decades ago at the top, and it has 
filtered down through every stratum of society. A great 
deal of our present unrest may be traced to it. It has 
inclined women all the more to be nervous, to take noth- 
ing as immutable in their lives, to keep them in a state 
of suspense in which they continually look forward to the 
time when they will be rich, when they can climb to a 
higher circle in society. Many a wife, tormented by her 
unfulfilled desire for the luxuries of her neighbors, nags 

66 



MARRIAGE: WHY WOMEN PAIL 

her husband because he does not make as much money 
and until he wishes there never was such a thing as mar- 
riage and that all wives could be consigned to the shades 
below. 

The martyred air some women assume is enough to 
drive a man to drink even when the market price is $35 
a quart. Not a few socalled ' ' good women ' ' put on this 
air of martyrdom when everything does not go to suit 
them. They do it in the knowledge that there is nothing 
against which a man feels so absolutely defenseless. I 
have known men, really better human beings than their 
wives, who were made to endure this intolerable pose on 
the part of selfish women. The stronger of them take it 
humorously when they are not too much exasperated by 
it, and the weaker ones run away — just anywhere to find 
relief from the stuffy atmosphere of injured virtue which 
chokes them every time they enter their homes. Many 
a man, under such circumstances has devoutly wished 
that his wife were an out-and-out sinner so that for once 
he might tell her in plain language just what he thought 
of her. But, alas for the man, this type of woman never 
abandons her strategic position of martyr — and the poor 
man never gets his chance. 

All day long, men are meeting people, in the streets, 
in the cars, in their offices and stores. When night falls, 
they have had. just about enough of human society, 
barring occasional evenings for diversion, and they long 
for a little peace and cheerful quiet within their own 
four walls. Women who have been at home all day find 
it difficult to understand this. If they have not used all 
their surplus energy in cooking, cleaning, sewing and 
nursing children, they look forward to the evening as a 

67 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

time for ''excitement." They want to play cards or 
dance or go to the theater unmindful of the fact that 
their spouses may be deadly tired. This difference of 
aims is a fruitful source of discord. It irritates a man 
who has put his whole mind and strength into his busi- 
ness to be ''dragged out" when he does not feel like it, 
and he readily jumps to the conclusion that his efforts to 
make a success are not being appreciated and that he is 
getting no encouragement at home. 

One of the commonest shortcomings of women is to be 
deficient in a practical knowledge of human nature. Men 
are perfectly simple and sincere in being satisfied with 
passionate love — it is their wives who tire of it quickly 
and who try to gloss over their marital relations with a 
lot of sentiment and sophistry, and who insist that their 
husbands become interested in "higher things", that is, 
music, poetry, literature and art. This type of woman 
easily comes to believe that her husband does not under- 
stand her, and she is often foolish enough to drop insin- 
uating remarks to the effect that his tastes are not very 
lofty and that his nature is too common to be in tune 
with the "ideal". 

Marriage is essentially woman's business, just as cre- 
ating material wealth is man 's. It was instituted, not to 
please man, but for her own protection and the welfare 
of her children. That being so, it is a pity that more 
w^omen do not make shining successes of marriage when 
they have tolerably good material to work with, and that 
so many wend their uncertain steps into a domestic rela- 
tions court. 



68 




'THANK YOU" PAYS DIVIDENDS 

HAVE just read a story about two brothers who 
have built up a tremendous business on ' ' thank 
you ' '. Operating a chain of eight stores, their 
sales have grown in a few years from $1 a day 
to over $300,000 a year. The keynote of all their busi- 
ness is — courtesy. It is a rule of their stores that if one 
of their salesmen should forget to say ' ' thank you ' ' to a 
purchaser, the latter may keep the goods and have his 
money back. Nor will these two brothers tolerate a per- 
functory expression of appreciation. Proprietors as well 
as salesmen make a point of saying ''thank you" in a 
manner and voice that carry conviction to their patrons. 
Their ''thank yous" warm the hearts and cheer the 
spirits of all their customers who do not need to be urged 
to "call again". 

Nor is business the only phase of life that profits by a 
hearty "thank you". In many instances home-life 
could be made much pleasanter and happier by a more 
generous interchange of thanks. When a young man is 
courting his sweetheart, she never dreams of taking all 
his delightful courtesies and the little events he provides 
for her pleasure as a matter of course unless she is an ill- 
bred young woman. 

"Thank you", she says with her most winning smile 
as he assists her to put on or take off her wraps. After 
a dinner or an evening at the theater, she would not 
think of bidding him goodby without her thanks. The 
gift of a bouquet or a box of candy inspires her grati- 
tude. Yet, how often this delightful exchange of cour- 

69 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

tesy is forgotten just as soon as the ink is dry on the 
marriage certificate ! How often all those little acts of 
courtesy that made their period of courting and be- 
trothal so delightfully fascinating are lost in the daily 
humdrum of domestic life ! Without meaning to do so, 
friend husband forgets to say "thank you" when his 
wife renders him some affectionate little service, and 
friend wife omits that word of appreciation when her 
husband, still mindful of her pleasure, brings home to 
her at evening a little remembrance, it may be only a 
flower or one of those magazines women like. 

Some years ago I visited a family composed of a 
brother and a sister. If the latter asked that her brother 
raise or lower the window, that he hand her a shawl or 
her work basket, that he carry her letters to the mail, 
his invariable answer was ''with pleasure". And that 
one little phrase "with pleasure" was said in a tone in- 
dicating that it gave him the liveliest personal satisfac- 
tion to serve her in any way that he could. That broth- 
er's gracious courtesy to his sister burned itself into 
my memory and the way that he uttered that one phrase 
and others of a similar nature produced on me an im- 
pression that I never will forget. 

We need more "thank yous" and more smiles in do- 
mestic, social and business life. A hearty "thank you" 
costs nothing and sometimes it pays big dividends. Cer- 
tainly, it smoothes the way of all business. When you 
make a purchase from a salesman or saleswoman who 
hands you your change and your package with a cheer- 
ful ' ' thank you ' ', you say to yourself, ' ' I will certainly 
go there again". There are some salespeople so kind, so 
solicitious, so helpful in their manner of giving you atten- 

70 



tion as to make shopping a delightful experience. There 
are others who produce the opposite effect. The latter 
are heavy handicaps to the firms that employ them. 
Where they cannot learn to give the public a polite con- 
sideration they ought to make room for those who can. 

A magazine editor who in his very young manhood 
sold books for a living, said this to me one day: *'When 
a book agent calls upon you in your office, I beg you to 
thank him for calling before he leaves. You may not 
want to buy his books, or you may not even have the 
time to look at them — but in the name of humanity, 
don't let him go without a kind word. Book agents are 
the most persistently snubbed creatures in business. 
And for the very reason that they are accustomed to re- 
ceiving scant courtesy, a kindly ' thank you ' is something 
no book agent will ever forget". 

There is no excuse or occasion for impoliteness or dis- 
courtesy. They have no place in civilized life. 

Business men and business women — husbands and 
wives — parents and children — brothers and sisters — 
teachers and pupils — lovers and friends — plenty of smil- 
ing, cordial "thank yous", generously and judiciously 
distributed, pay big dividends in happiness and success. 



71 




RECREATION FOR HOUSEWIVES 

HE sense of duty that ''leans backward" is at 
once, a pathetic and tragic thing. It is pa- 
thetic because it is so sadly mistaken, and it 
becomes tragic for the reason that so many un- 
necessary evils are likely to follow in its train. It seems 
to have an affinity for extremists, and not the least com- 
mon of its victims is the housewife, who, lacking a proper 
sense of proportion regarding her duty to herself and her 
family, digs an early grave for herself by giving up all 
amusement and recreation and working herself, literally, 
to death. Here is a letter that came to me from a wife 
and mother who is keenly disturbed over the problem of 
her recreation, and who says: 

**I am a woman in my twenties with four babies. I 
do all of my own work except the washing. I make the 
children 's garments and also my husband 's shirts. I am 
not complaining — don't misunderstand me, for I thor- 
oughly enjoy my children and my v/ork, and I believe 
that the busiest people are the happiest. The one thing 
that worries me is the problem of recreation. About 
once in two weeks, I have my mother stay with the chil- 
dren while I go to a moving picture theater. I love good 
pictures and it is a great relief to sit down and relax. 
Yet, all the time I am in the theater I feel as if I were 
committing a crime against my family, and I ought not 
to take time from my home when there are so many 
things to be done there. On the other hand, I always 
return from my little outings feeling greatty refreshed 
and better able to go on with my work. What do you 

72 



RECREATION FOR HOUSEWIVES 

think about it? Am I wasting time that I should be 
giving to my home and my husband?" 

The only crime that this very good and conscientious 
wife and mother is likely to commit is in not giving her- 
self enough recreation for the welfare of her own fam- 
ily and for her own good. Two things happen to the 
woman who spends every waking hour on her household 
duties — she overdraws her account, physically speaking, 
and she deteriorates mentally. 

For every law nature makes, she exacts a penalty for 
its violation. Every time we break a law, nature takes 
note of that fact, and sooner or later she renders an 
accounting for all the nights of sleep we have lost, the 
meals we were too busy to eat, the days when we ex- 
hausted, not only our normal fund of strength and en- 
ergy, but that which we hold in reserve. The bill is pre- 
sented, and we must pay, sometimes in the coin of 
exhaustion, sometimes in illness, and it may be with 
our lives. 

Every mother of a family has the future as well as 
the present to think of. She owes it to her husband and 
her children to take enough rest and recreation to keep 
herself mentally and physically fit. What will it profit 
her husband and her children who need her mothering 
care until maturity if she exhausts herself by the time 
she reaches middle life, with the result that she either 
sinks into invalidism or is called to the other world? 
No human being can live without a reasonable amount 
of relaxation, and one of the commonest mistakes made 
by the people of this country, men and women alike, is 
to overwork and run up a bill to nature that they never 
will be able to pay. 

73 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

The woman who never takes any pleasure loses her 
youthfulness and beauty. She forfeits her charm and 
becomes stale. 

"I have not the strength to do all the housework that 
I ought to do and all the sewing for my family, so I have 
had to decide what is absolutely essential and what is 
partially non-essential and make out my program ac- 
cording to that", said a bright and sensible wife and 
mother. ''My husband and my children prefer that I 
should feel well and happy to having every nook and 
corner immaculate. As the lesser of two evils, I do not 
keep my house as clean as when I could afford to hire 
some help". Devoted as she is to the interests of her 
family, this woman strikes a happy balance by claiming 
certain hours for rest and recreation, to go to an occa- 
sional party or attend the theater. 

Moderation is a great virtue. The nerves of a great 
many women in this country are on a hair trigger be- 
cause they never give themselves any rest or repose. I 
have known women, who, while performing all the work 
of their households, with the result that they always 
were in a state of semi-exhaustion would embroider their 
children's garments, and I once knew an over- worked 
woman who embroidered her monogram on aprons she 
made for kitchen wear. 

The wiser wife and mother so arranges her program 
that she reserves to herself a few hours for recreation 
and pleasure, not once in a fortnight, but several times 
a week. She is the better wife and mother for it. She 
lives longer. She is healthier and happier, and her 
children love her all the more. 



74 



PITY, DON'T CONDEMN SNOBS 



ROM time to time I receive requests to write on 
the subject of snobs. Always, I am tempted 
to accept the challenge ; first, because new 
kinds and varieties of snobs always are de- 
veloping, and second, I find from year to year, my ideas 
concerning snobs undergoing some change. 

Snobs and their snobbishness formerly provoked me 
to anger. They no longer do. I have come to realize 
that snobbishness is the result of personal limitations, of 
ignorance, a narrow soul and a small mind. Instead of 
condemning snobs for their snobbishness, we should pity 
them. They merely are suffering from ' ' growing-pains ' ' 
and they likely will feel better in some future day. 

You may have thought that snobs are a self-satisfied 
and self-confident lot. On the contrary, they are the 
most uneasy and discomposed of persons. Continually 
they are fearful of saying or doing something that may 
not place them in the best possible light. They con- 
stantly are tortured with fears, doubts and misgivings. 
Judging by some of their actions, you would think that 
their reputations, their social positions actually hung 
by a thread. 

This fear which pursues them like a Nemesis will ex- 
plain snobs and many of the things they do. It explains 
the woman who makes a pretense of not having seen her 
neighbor who has not yet scaled so many rungs of the 
social ladder. It explains the woman who trembles at 
the thought of having her name appear in a guest-list 
unless that list be composed of the names of her own set. 

75 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

It explains the mother of the bride who protests against 
having the name of the groom's parents in the wedding 
story because they are not as prominent socially as some 
of the bride's friends. It explains the employer who 
cannot bring himself to acknowledge courteously the 
presence of one of his employes, outside of office hours. 
It explains the man who is just a little bit ashamed to 
take a girl out to dinner, no matter how pretty and gen- 
tle and refined she may be, just because she happens ' * to 
work". 

I do not know whether to call it a comedy or a tragedy 
— an incident I witnessed recently. 

At a certain social gathering, three women, richly 
dressed and much be jeweled, were standing in a group. 
Their money was a decidedly recent acquisition. The 
only thing they knew to do with it was to buy furs, dia- 
monds in great profusion, houses with too much furniture 
in them and expensive motor cars. Suddenly, their con- 
versation, keyed to a note rather unpleasantly personal, 
was interrupted by the friendly salutation of a fourth 
woman whose face, manner, voice, dress and bearing be- 
tokened gentility. Her gown and hat, it must be ad- 
mitted, were not in the very latest fashion and her hands 
were bare of rings. What did those three women do but 
deliberated^ turn their too ample backs upon her — three 
mongrels trying to snub a thorough-bred. 

Easy money, I suppose, always will be the soil in which 
snobbery flourishes. Easy money, without education or 
native refinement is the mother of vulgarity, pretense 
and ostentation. It has a way of clothing its makers in 
garments of habit, thought and manner that are ill-fitting 
to say the very least. 

76 



PITY, don't condemn SNOBS 

I do not believe that the newly rich American man 
often is willingly a snob. Usually, it is the woman in his 
family who drags him at the chariot wheels of her snob- 
bery and who brings up his sons and daughters in the 
faith. The average man who makes a success feels just 
aj3 good as anybody. He is an elemental creature in this 
— that he sees no reason why he should conciliate men 
and women of loftier social position. They may have 
more graceful manners, or they may speak better Eng- 
lish, but they haven't any bigger house than he has, or a 
bigger pile of rocks. Usually, he is too robust of nature, 
too wholesome to sacrifice his self-respect to gain a doubt 
ful end. 

When you pause to consider that the general run of 
intelligent people ha". ^ just about the same cares and 
responsibilities, joys, s :tows and satisfactions, it seems 
so pitiful that they shciild permit themselves to be di- 
vided by superficial things. In the hour of death or in 
the face of hunger all superficialities drop from us like 
a garment, and we get down to first principles, made one 
in our common humanity. 

The true man seeks fame in this world, the snob 
notoriety. The true man hopes to win a place in the 
hearts of the people, while the snob is fully satisfied to 
be in the public eye. The true man hopes to win the re- 
spect and sincere admiration of his fellows. The snob's 
ambition is to be envied by those who have less than he. 
The true man waits to be sought out. The snob, who 
imagines that everybody is secretly worshiping his 
money, rushes in where an angel would fear to tread. 
While he hugs to his soul the bright delusion that he is 
exciting great interest and curiosity, he inspires nothing 

77 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

more enviable than the silent contempt of the wiser and 
better-bred. 

Thorough-bred men and women never are afraid to be 
kind and courteous. They feel none of that uneasiness 
in coming in contact with humbler persons which so 
torments the snob. They never are afraid of imperiling 
their social position by any act of human kindness, 
though it be done to the lowliest creature. They can 
stand apart from the worry and fret and glare of the 
social scramble, unconcerned and secure. 



78 



CHARACTER IS POWER 

E WOULD rather have a small account with a 
good name behind it than a large account in 
the name of a man who did not stand for the 
best things", declared a highly successful 
banker. ' ' The bank account that is backed by character 
is the account we are looking for". 

More and more the business world is coming to value 
character. More and more it asks less about a man's 
technical skill than concerning his character and habits 
of life. There was a day when a brilliant drunkard had 
a pretty fair chance in business. That day is past and 
gone. One of the first things an employer wants to 
know about a prospective employe is the character of the 
man and his habits. The first consideration with a 
banker when he loans money is the character of the per- 
son who seeks the loan, for he knows that the man of 
character will pay his debts and meet his obligations at 
whatever sacrifice to himself. Life insurance companies 
are keenly interested in the character of men and women 
who hold their policies, and they are extremely suspicious 
of grafters and libertines. Men and women of known 
character and established reputations are always in de- 
mand in the business world. 

Every city has its group of ''prominent citizens". 
Most of them are men and women of character. Some 
of them are not. 

There is an "upper ten" or a "four hundred" in 
society. In every group, whether it be in business, in 
society, in the church, lodge, store or workshop, you will 

79 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

find men and women of character. They are marked 
men and women and they stand out from the mass. They 
may not have very much money, but they have something 
that is more precious than gold. 

What is superior character? 

It is not to be gauged by the money you have, by the 
clothes you wear, and sad to relate, it may not always be 
determined by the position you hold in society. 

Neither is it to be found in genius, if you are one of 
those rare persons who has genius, or in talent or any 
special ability. 

There is many a millionaire who is a cheap scoundrel. 
There is many an artist who is a cad. There are great 
actresses and singers who are wholly without character. 
Sooner or later they are all found out, and if nothing 
worse happens to them, they fail in realizing by one-half 
on their potentialities. 

In a great financial panic in the middle of the last 
century all the bank presidents of New York City held 
a meeting one night. When they exchanged experiences 
on the amount of specie that had been drawn from their 
various banks during the day — some of them had lost as 
high as 75 per cent of their deposits — Moses Taylor of 
the City bank reported: ''We had $400,000 in our bank 
this morning. Tonight, we have $470,000 ' '. So great was 
the confidence of people in the character of Moses Tay- 
lor that they had in many cases deposited in the City 
bank money they had drawn from other banks. 

How many young people realize that substantial suc- 
cess depends more upon character than what they know 
and what they have? 

It was character that elected both Washington and 
80 



CHARACTER IS POWER 

Lincoln to the presidency, and I sincerely believe that it 
is character, more than any other qualification that the 
people of this country want in their chief executive. 
They want honesty and sterling ability. They want no 
tricksters or cheap politicians. They want one of whom 
it may be said, that, ' ' The elements so mixed in him that 
Nature might stand up and say to all the world, ' This is 
a man ! ' ' * 

There must be something in a man better than his 
achievements ; something finer than his material wealth ; 
something nobler than his genius; something more en- 
during than fame. 

Money and fame and culture and position are sources 
of undoubted strength — today. But character is the one 
dependable source of power yesterday, today and for- 
ever. It is both a cause and a result. 



81 



WOMAN— PRACTICAL POET 

^BNSPIRATION, true culture and refinement— 

|n| these are the three great needs of the home. 

S^J A great many people look upon personal cul- 
ture as a strange, remote and unattainable 
thing. The girl living in a small town, far removed from 
the centers of fashion, the theaters, the opera and all 
the luxuries that modern industry can offer, imagines 
that life's best inspirations and personal culture are out 
of her reach. The country woman, still more remote 
from advanced schools, colleges and luxurious living and 
the hard-working women in the city who never lift their 
eyes above their daily round of monotonous household 
duty assume likewise that culture is something quite 
apart from them. 

True culture and refinement are within the reach of 
every human being, whatever his condition or station in 
life. The poorest farm woman, the humblest w^orking 
girl, the man who performs the roughest kind of labor 
can be thoroughly cultivated if they so desire. There is 
nothing mysterious or illusive in refinement of thought, 
manner or speech that renders it accessible only to the 
elect. Education and refinement of feeling are possible 
to all men and women. In some of the simplest homes, 
there resides the truest culture, the keenest sense of the 
artistic, the utmost refinement of manner and speech. On 
the contrary, one can meet crudeness and coarseness in 
the finest mansions, a vulgarity of thought and a lack 
of inspiration that will send a chill to the marrow of 
one's bones. 

For the uses of culture, it matters very little whether 
82 



WOMAN — PRACTICAL POET 

you have a rag carpet or an Axminster rug on the floor, 
so long as the colors are harmoniously blended and it 
serves the purpose to which it is put. It matters very 
little whether the curtains at the window are of muslin 
or the finest lace so long as they are clean, well made 
and well hung. Many people have the idea that cheap 
things cannot be beautiful, that artistic effects can be 
achieved only by the expenditure of a great deal of 
money. They believe that they cannot be well educated 
unless they graduate from a college, travel extensively 
and have a library containing a thousand books. They 
forget that some of our greatest men have had nothing 
more than a common school education, that artists often 
spring from peasant stock. They overlook the fact that 
self-made men of fine attainment were inspired to reach 
out for the best things in the world, that some of them 
bought books when they did not have enough money to 
supply them with food and clothing. When he could 
not afford to buy candles, Abraham Lincoln pored over 
his few precious volumes during winter evenings by the 
light of the fire. Josiah Wedgwood borrowed a copy of 
Thomson's '^Seasons", learned it by heart, and out of 
the inspiration he received from that one volume, he 
passed from the modeling of butter crocks to the ex- 
quisite potteries that bear his name. 

It is true that multitudes of people have forsaken or 
avoided the means of culture because caste is founded 
to a great extent upon material prosperity. They be- 
come disheartened when society exalts outward over in- 
ward things, the material over the spiritual. Such con- 
ditions have unfortunately alienated man from his 
brother. They have sundered the ties of common hu- 

83 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

inanity. They have bred jealously, scorn and mutual ill- 
will. The poor man has thought that he was in some 
way radically different from the rich man, and for that 
reason it was futile for him to aspire. The poor woman, 
likewise, has been dismayed by the luxuries and oppor- 
tunities of her wealthier sisters, and w^here she might 
have seen diamonds had she been looking for them, she 
has seen only the dust. 

There is no valid reason, however, why any class or 
condition of people should neglect the means of grace, 
why they should tolerate in themselves or their children 
rude speech, careless manners, personal slovenliness, or 
why such characteristics should persist from one genera- 
tion to the other. Also, there is no reason why courtesy, 
cleanliness, delicacy, ease of manner and refinement 
should not be habitual with the laboring multitude. Is 
not a man more than dress or upholstery? Cannot the 
spirit triumph over humble situations and defy the show 
of the universe? 

The burden of refining influence rests, of course, with 
women. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that if all 
the women in the world were destroyed, all the men 
would be barbarians within a year. It is the woman who 
has always aspired to and demanded the means of refine- 
ment. It is she who lays the spotless white cloth and 
arranges the bright silver. It is the woman who picks 
the flower and puts it tenderly in a vase. It is the woman 
who brings a bit of art or music in the home. The art of 
dress would be unknown were it not for women. For 
every true woman is a practical poet. By her gentleness, 
by her domestic arts and refinements, she tames the 
savage in her mate. 

84 



WOMAN — PRACTICAL POET 

One day I heard a man recalling the dulcet tones of 
his mother's voice. As she passed her children in going 
about her housework, she would give each one a swift 
caress. Though she was compelled to do all the work 
for a large family, washing, ironing, cooking, scrubbing, 
sewing, mending, she at the same time schooled her chil- 
dren in a classic appreciation of life. She so taught 
them the means of grace that they have become as nat- 
ural to them as breathing. They remember her as the 
one most charming and magnetic woman in the world. 

If we would all quit aping the rich man and trying 
to outstrip our neighbors; if we would consecrate our 
leisure and such sums as we could reasonably save from 
our earnings to the means of culture such as the best 
books, the best music, to congenial society, to the enjoy- 
ment of the beautiful in art and nature and to the kindly 
and sympathetic offices of humanity, we would no longer 
stand accused of being a nation of superficial culture. 
We would soon earn the right to be called the most 
broadly cultivated people on earth. 



85 




MODERN CHESTERFIELDS 

LIHU ROOT has said that every lawyer should 
read Blackstone's Commentaries once a year. 
Mr. Root not only took his own counsel — he 
actually wrote out the commentaries in long- 
hand three times in his life. 

Whether we be lawyers, doctors, business men or 
laborers, there is one book which all of us would do well 
to read once a year. Better still would it be to write it 
and memorize it during the formative period of our lives. 
That book is "Lord Chesterfield's Letters to His Son", 
the most valuable treatise on manners and deportment 
that ever was penned. More than that, it is an eloquent 
argument for striving, and urging toward ambition. 
Lord Chesterfield had no patience with men who did not 
realize on their talents and opportunities. And his 
words are the more convincing because they were ad- 
dressed to a much beloved son. 

For a long time I have believed that the business col- 
leges of this country could teach nothing to their pupils 
that would be more useful to them in their commercial 
careers than the art of deportment. And the first col- 
lege that adds a course in good manners to its curriculum 
is going to make tremendous strides ahead of its rivals. 
Suppose a college does graduate good typists ! How can 
they render satisfactory service to their employers if 
they do not know how to comport themselves? I have 
seen typists who would never miss so much as the in- 
sertion of a comma in their typing, but who had atrocious 
manners. Such a woman is not only at a severe personal 

86 



MODERN CHESTERFIELDS 

disadvantage — she is a constant source of embarrass- 
ment to her employer, who may never know how many 
persons whose favor he desires, she inadvertently will 
offend. 

As you go about in the world you encounter some very 
queer ideas about the function of good manners. Some 
men seem to think that it is effeminate to exhibit beauti- 
ful manners before their associates. Others labor under 
the delusion that politeness is a time-waster. They hold 
the idea that a short answer is a short cut in business, 
that the way to be looked up to and respected is to be 
abrupt and gruff. No philosophy ever was more falla- 
cious. It may require a little more thought, but it takes 
no more time to reply politely than it does to be curt. 

There is no more interesting study than the psychology 
of business procedure as it is applied by different busi- 
ness men. A certain man of very large interests has not 
a single chair in his reception room. It matters not how 
long you must wait to see him, you are compelled to 
stand. By the time you obtain an audience with him, 
you are so weary and so much irritated that you want 
to turn and go. What is this man's reason for making 
you uncomfortable? Simply this — if he succeeds in 
wearing and irritating the people who call to see him, 
he believes that when they enter his private office, he will 
have the advantage of them. They will be tired and 
nervous, worried and out of sorts. Being unwearied and 
unruffled himself, he is in a position to "get the best'' 
of them. 

Evidently, this man, who is a very thoughtful man, 
fails to see that there is a reverse side to this situation. 
I do not believe he has ever suspected that it is not wise 

87 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

to treat friend or foe alike. He has not counted upon 
making enemies by his ungraciousness. He greatly un- 
derestimates the value of friendship and the good will 
of his fellow-men. If he were a clearer-sighted student 
of psychology, he would know that you can make a bet- 
ter deal with a man when he is in a good humor, when 
he is comfortable physically than when he is not. 

Dispatch is the soul of business and nothing contrib- 
utes more toward dispatch than a civil manner. It 
takes no more time to rise than to remain seated. A 
pleasant ''Thank you" is said in a breath. No time is 
lost in prefacing one's request with that gracious little 
word ''Please" or to accede to a request with the phrase, 
* ' With pleasure ' '. It is such a simple thing to open the 
door for a departing caller, and it does help so much to 
say with a smile, "I am glad that you came". 

The Chesterfields make the conspicuous successes. You 
seldom find one that fails. 



BEAUTY OF THE LATER LOVE 

OW little consideration do we give to the beau- 
ties of the later love. How thoughtless we are 
in our common assumption that the only real 
love matches are those of early youth. Young 
love is an exquisite sentiment. It is a divine madness, 
full of beauty and charm and flavor and fragrance. It 
is like a rosy cloud hovering over the eastern horizon of 
the early morning of life. Yet, its beauty is not so 
gorgeous as the love that comes to man and woman when 
they have lived beyond their first youth, who take to the 
altar with them all the richness of a fine experience, the 
wisdom that comes from lives well lived, and a depth 
of romantic feeling and devotion such as boyhood and 
girlhood cannot possibly know. 

Some years ago while I was a reporter of society, a 
cultivated gentlewoman, her soft white hair framing a 
lovel}^ face came into my office one day and, with a good 
deal of hesitation, asked me to make announcement of 
her marriage which was to take place the following day. 

''What will my friends say about me?" she asked 
v/hen she had finished giving me the story. 

"They will say that they are delighted", I answered. 
This delightful woman who had retained much of her 
youthful energy and vivacity was marrying a man of 
suitable age and position, and there was every reason to 
assume that they would ''live happily ever after", an 
assumption that has proved to be correct. Theirs has 
been an exceptionally happy marriage. If ever two 

89 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

persons were looking peacefully and cheerfully toward 
the fade-out of life's drama, if ever man and woman 
lived in perfect harmony and in daily consideration of 
their service to each other, they are the white-haired 
couple whose wedding story I wrote with the keenest 
pleasure some ten years ago. 

No human tie can be of stronger tissue than the at- 
tachment between a mature man and woman, who un- 
hampered with young illusions, take each other for bet- 
ter or for worse. 

A young girl has too many illusions, she is too inex- 
perienced, and the sex instinct counts for too much in 
the love she gives to the man of her choice, for her love 
to be as deeply founded as that of a woman of gi^ater 
age. Curiosity is a factor in her thinking and feeling. 
Adventure is another element. Where a young girl 
yields to emotional feeling, an older woman makes a 
deliberate choice. To the man who wins that older 
woman I would say, "Is not that choice a subtle flat- 
tery ? ' ' The woman is armed with experience and knowl- 
edge. For that knowledge and experience she usually 
has paid pretty dearly. It is extremely doubtful if the 
inexperienced girl, who naturally enough is unable to 
make comparisons, measures anything at its true worth. 

Then, a girl's coquetry is but simple, while the 
woman's coquetry is inexhaustible. She can satisfy a 
score of demands made by a man 's vanity while a young 
girl does well if she satisfies one. With her greater 
power and dignity, with her greater understanding and 
sympathy and tolerance, her ability to comfort where 
a girl would only moan, she need not forfeit her girlish- 
ness. We all know certain women who seem to possess 

90 



BEAUTY OF THE LATER LOVE 

a deathless gift of girlish spirits, which cling to them 
until the end of life. 

In the golden prime of a later love, when a man and 
a women look out over life's poetic summit, they com- 
bine with the fervor of the first passion that depth of 
feeling which only experience can bring. Youth can 
look only into the future, and a strange, unexplored 
future at that. Maturity looks both ways, back into the 
past, forward into the future, into the whole course of 
romantic love. "This is love" they can say to each other 
for they know whereof they speak. 

No one has ever expressed this sentiment more beau- 
tifully or more truly than Henry Ward Beecher in one 
of his sermons where he says: "Love is the river of life 
in this world. Think not that ye know it who stand at 
the little tinkling rill, the first small fountain. Not un- 
til you have gone through the rocky gorges, and not lost 
the stream ; not until you Irave gone through the meadow, 
and the stream has widened and deepened until fleets 
could rise on its bosom; not until beyond the meadow 
you have come to the unfathomable ocean, and poured 
your treasure into its depths — not until then can you 
know what love is". 

If this be true, then only maturity can know and ex- 
perience the full measure of love. Only in maturity can 
men and women discover themselves in each other. The 
younger people who read this may resent it. But those 
who have reached life's summit or are approaching it, 
will know^ the meaning of my words. 



91 



WIT VERSUS SILVER PLATE 

E'LL have tea and bread and butter sand- 
wiches. Not a very heavy diet — ^but it will 
do." "Do let me contribute some cake", 
urged the friend in whose honor this festivity 
was to be given. 

"No, thank you, I couldn't possibly let you do that. 
Everybody knows that I can afford bread and butter and 
that I cannot afford cake. So, we will have the bread 
and butter and if there are any on this list of forty who 
are not satisfied with such light rations, well — I will 
have to let them go." 

If more women would assume so sensible an attitude 
toward the discharge of their social obligations, there 
would be a great deal more wholesome pleasure to be 
enoyed in this life. 

The first speaker had been a great belle in her girl- 
hood. She had married a man in official life who was 
not blessed with very much money. Very wisely, they 
decided in the beginning to cut the scale of their living 
to fit the cloth of their income, and to make no apologies 
for the fact that they could not dress or entertain with 
the same lavishness and beauty as their wealthier friends. 
This, however, did not prevent them from thoroughly 
enjoying their environment, from entertaining in their 
own manner and from going about just as happily and 
gaily as if they had been worth a million or two. For 
what they lacked in elegance of equipment they fully 
compensated for in personal charm and bright spirits. 

92 



WIT VERSUS SILVER PLATE 

The wife offered no excuses for the simplicity of her 
wardrobe, nor for her bread and butter sandwiches and 
tea. So delightful was the quality of her hospitality that 
not one of her guests ever thought of comparing to her 
disadvantage her simple menage with the handsome ap- 
pointments of larger homes. 

Half the people who feel themselves snubbed by so- 
ciety actually are not snubbed, at all. They are the 
victims of vain imaginings. They see slights where they 
are not. Men and women of quality who once attain a 
position need never lose it. Let the blows of outrageous 
fortune descend upon them fast and thickly, they are 
not on that account condemned to isolation unless they 
create it of themselves. Yet, you hear such people be- 
moaning the fickleness and cruelty of society. They are 
not invited as they were. They are not sought out with 
the same eagerness and persistence as in their palmier 
days. Perhaps they are not so much sought, and with 
good reason. Society is designed to be happy, light- 
hearted and vivacious. It is not attracted by the peo- 
ple who consider themselves victims. It keeps no crown 
for the martyr. It seeks diversion and it demands that 
it shall be amused. People who carry a burden of grief 
and disappointment with them are out of place within 
its folds. 

Society is one vast system of reciprocity. You enter- 
tain me and I entertain you. This is nothing more or 
less than justice. Why should either man or woman ex- 
pect to receive in lavish measure when they make no 
effort to give? Even the most charming and gifted 
persons wear out their welcome in the course of time. 

93 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

The most generous of hosts grow weary of asking the 
same persons over and over when the latter make no 
return in kind. 

''I simply cannot return the courtesies of wealthier 
people", you often hear a woman say. Yes, she could 
return them if she were not so hampered by false pride. 
Of course, she cannot pay off her obligations in the coin 
of lavish and sumptuous entertainment, but she can do 
it in a smaller way. Some of the most delightful social 
experiences of a lifetime are had in the simplest homes 
that radiate kindliness and generous feeling, where wit 
and humor are enthroned. 

It would be very fine, of course, if everybod}^ could 
live in a mansion, if all men and women could eat off of 
Madeira embroidery laid over mahogany and drink out 
of priceless cups. It would be still finer if all the people 
who are gifted intellectually and artistically could have 
material settings appropriate to them. But since artistic 
and intellectual gifts do not always bring a very high 
price in the market, those members of society who are 
poor in material possessions and rich in spiritual things 
should give of their kind of riches. Men and women in 
artists' colonies develop a wholesome independence of 
fine homes, floor coverings, furniture and silver dishes. 
They know what some other people have only vaguely 
suspected — that the only thing in this world of lasting 
value is an idea, and ideas are their regular medium of 
exchange. 

Why cannot more of us trust to our wit to make our 
homes pleasant and attractive? Wit is certainly more 
satisfying and stimulating than endless cakes and ice- 
creams. 

94 




HUMOR, THE SAVING GRACE 

HAT a saving grace is a sense of humor ! Humor- 
ous men and women are the flowers of the 
human race. What matters it that the world 
never celebrates them as heroes and heroines? 
It is enough that they can be with us, that they have a 
genius for lightening so much that is heavy, that they 
take the sting out of life. Life would be unbearable 
without the comic element. We could not survive it half 
so long. 

It gives us a sense of relief in reading of a great event 
in history like that of the trial of Lord Stafford, of his 
marvelous speech and his stirring appeal to ''the saint 
of heaven", to read also that the people at the trial ate 
nuts and apples, talked and even laughed and betted on 
the great question of his acquittal or condemnation. 
That simple human element in the trial gives us a sense 
of relief just when our nerves are taut. Nor is it sur- 
prising that some persons could have found the heart 
to eat or bet on such an occasion, for the average mind 
cannot stand much concentration. It must and will have 
relief. 

One of the secrets of Shakespeare's greatness was the 
relieving charm of his humor. Think of the grave- 
digger's scene in Hamlet and the porter's dialogue with 
several imaginary persons in the tragedy of Macbeth. 
The person who is deficient in humor is bound to be 
deficient in a practical knowledge of human affairs. The 
two always go together. Such persons know little and 
care less about the world of "cake and ale". Usually 

95 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

they are unsympathetic and intolerant and they take 
little, if any, interest in "the easy, ordinary, shop-keep- 
ing world ' '. 

I cannot understand why it is that so many women are 
lacking in a sense of humor unless it be that they live 
more solitary lives than men, and that they experience 
by no means so many contacts with people and events. 

If all women had a sense of humor a great many more 
of them would hold the love and interest of their hus- 
bands and there would be far less domestic infelicity. 
It is the woman who has no sense of humor that makes 
mountains out of mole-hills, who cries because her hus- 
band goes away in the morning without kissing her, who 
imagines that he no longer loves her when he appears to 
be more interested in his newspaper than in her. It is 
the woman without a sense of humor who longs to parade 
her knowledge before her husband and her friends. I 
care not how brainy or scholarly a man may be, he is not 
looking for a brilliant display of intellectual fireworks 
when he goes home after a hard day's work. What he 
wants is a play of humor, fun and brightness and good 
cheer. He wants to be amused rather than instructed, 
He wants to forget the battles of the day and the 
anxieties of the morrow. Many a man has turned from 
a too heavy, too serious wife to the ''wreathed smiles" 
and effervescent spirits of "the other woman", not be- 
cause he was willing to be an unfaithful husband, but 
because he was so weary of his wife's ponderous talk 
and manner, and he so longed for a taste of the lighter 
side of life. 

If you have a sense of humor, you can live through 
anything. Few conditions in life are without their 

96 



HUMOR, THE SAVING GRACE 

funny aspects, and the person who can see the humorous 
side to an unpleasant happening blesses himself and 
everybody else. There are a surprising number of 
things in this world to laugh at, not in a spirit of rid- 
icule, not out of a superior attitude of mind, but in a 
good humored acceptance of life's incongruities and the 
pranks that fate persistently plays. 

The very essence of true humor is love. As Carlyle 
tells us, it is a sort of inverse sublimity, exalting, as it 
were into our affections what lies below us, and drawing 
down gently into our affections that which is above. 



97 




CAN MEN REFORM WIVES? 

HE woman who marries an ordinary two-cylin- 
der man and who by the exercise of tact and 
patient effort converts him into a fine six- 
cylinder machine is one of the most interesting 
phenomena of modern civilization. 

The man who habitually has wasted his substance in 
extravagant living is taken in hand by a practical woman 
who in the nicest way in the world teaches him the value 
of thrift, of getting the most for his money, and who 
convinces him of the wisdom of saving a part of his in- 
come. 

Here is a man who did not enjoy good educational and 
social opportunities in his youth. His manners need a 
little polishing. He does not exactly know how to dress. 
Along comes a clever woman who appreciates the sound- 
ness of his character and who discerns in him far greater 
possibilities than he ever has dreamed are his. With a 
wisdom that is essentially feminine, she overlooks his 
superficial shortcomings, and falls in love with the fine 
manly spirit that to the casual observer may be obscured 
by an unpolished exterior. Within a few years after 
their marriage you notice that the man has come out 
wonderfully, that he is beautifully dressed, that his man- 
ners are delightful and that there is a new sparkle in 
his eye. Well-timed and skillfully administered sugges- 
tion have almost transformed him. 

You have seen a third type — the man who never has ap- 
peared to have much ambition. Year after year he had 
plodded along and always in the same old rut. More 

98 



CAN MEN REFORM WIVES? 

successful men regard him as mediocre. He never will 
get anywhere, they say. Nobody cares for his opinion. 
He has no influence. Habitually, he is overlooked. Per- 
haps he has reached middle age, has been once married, 
and has been left a widower. As a widower, he is of less 
consequence than ever. Then some canny little creature 
with a clearer vision than the rest sees real possibilities 
in him. Overjoyed to find somebody who believes in 
him, who perceives elements of greatness in him, the 
man marries her. And what happens? I need not tell 
you, for you have seen it with your own eyes. The man 
acts as if he had drunk of some powerful elixir. He 
takes a new grip on his business. He finds a delight in 
the society of his friends. He begins to make more 
money than he ever thought of making. New interests 
find a place in his life and all because of one small woman 
who was wiser than the rest. 

The transforming effect of woman's influence when it 
is inspired by love is almost a commonplace. Thousands 
of men literally are made over by it. Diamonds in the 
rough are polished until they shine with a ray serene. 

But, why is it that so few man are able to exercise a 
civilizing influence upon their wives? Why is it that 
superior husbands do not reform their inferior wives? 
Why is it that commonplace wives almost invariably 
remain commonplace even though they have the ad- 
vantage of association with extraordinary men? 

It is almost impossible for a man to alter the character, 
the manners and the habits of a woman, first, because 
he does not know how to go about it, and second, because 
women do not take so kindly to criticism and suggestion 
as do most men. 

99 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

When a man disapproves of his wife 's latest choice of 
millinery, how does he express himself? Nine times out 
of ten he will say to her bluntly, **what did you buy 
that hat for?" 

What does a woman say when she is striving to cul- 
tivate her husband's taste in neckties? She will do one 
of two things if she is a real woman. She will confiscate 
the tie that does not suit her husband's peculiar style of 
beauty and she will tell him that it has been lost, or that 
it had worn so shabby that she gave it to the man who 
does the chores. Or, admitting that the tie is still avail- 
able, she will say in her softest manner, '^Dearie, don't 
you think this other one is much more becoming to you ? ' ' 
Cunningly, she drops a remark about what charming 
manners Mr. Blank has and how gracefully he lifts his 
hat and how pleased his wife always looks when he puts 
her in their car. When he envies Jones who had to pay 
an excess profits tax, she tells him that he is ten times 
smarter than Jones, that his potentialities for success 
are limitless, that all he needs in his business is more 
confidence in himself. 

It is a feminine gift — this talent for civilizing men 
and giving them encouragement and inspiration and 
bringing them to a realization of their best gifts. Men 
have not the patience, and they will not take the trouble 
to do it as it must be done. Women are hurt and of- 
fended by their bluntness, and the man soon discovers 
that his efforts to improve his wife result in more harm 
than good. 

The difficulty of a man's reforming his wife is in- 
creased by her extreme sensitiveness. A woman can 
take criticism from another woman when she will not 

100 



CAN MEN REFORM WIVES? 

take it from a man. If a man tells his wife that her hat 
is not becoming, she most likely will do one of three 
things. She will get mad ; she will have a crying fit ; or 
she will ignore her husband's opinion in the fond belief 
that he knows nothing about women's hats and that on 
that basis his judgment is negligible. But, if her sister 
or a woman friend assures her that she has made a poor 
selection, she will take the hat back. 

In this way, I believe, the difference may be explained. 
It always has been woman's business to work with hu- 
manity, to train her children, to uphold ideals to her 
husband, to make life and living just as fine and beau- 
tiful as she possibly can. Man's business, on the con- 
trary, is to struggle with material forces, to till the 
ground, to produce food, to span the river, to tunnel the 
mountain, to establish lines of transportation, to create 
financial systems and to institute government. To ac- 
complish her ends, which usually are spiritual, woman 
uses the soft word. To accomplish his ends, which usu- 
ally are material, man must strike mightily, and with 
his strong right arm. 



101 



WHAT IS TRUE CULTURE? 

WONDER if the tired mother and conscientious 
housekeeper who seldom, if ever, finds time for 
"cultural activities" realizes that good house- 
keeping is the foundation of genuine culture 
and that she is actually doing more to promote the cause 
of culture than the woman who makes a specialty of self - 
improvement clubs. 

With no desire to disparage culture and improvement 
clubs which have their proper functions, it is well for 
women, particularly those w^ho "go in for culture" to 
remember that the process of self-cultivation is too subtle 
a thing to be affected by clubs. It is something that 
grows in the individual through environment and edu- 
cation — it cannot be suddenly grafted on from the out- 
side. I am sure that is what Mr. John Kendrick Bangs 
had in mind when he said to me during a recent visit that 
the hope of this country was not so much in its great in- 
dustries, its great w^ealth-producing institutions as in its 
fine, patient wives and mothers, striving to do the utmost 
for their children and in its teachers, who with no hope 
of greater compensation than a living wage, work for 
the creation of ideals. 

Some of us have a queer idea of what culture is. Some 
of us imagine that culture is in knowing a mezzotint 
when you see it instead of being wise in ways that help 
people to live decently and comfortably. Some of us 
imagine that culture resides in knowing how many wives 
Henry VIII had instead of knowing how to bake a good 
loaf of bread, in being able to chatter glibly about the 

102 



WHAT IS TRUE CULTURE? 

poets of the Renaissance period, instead of having 
mastered the art of laying an attractive table, of being 
on speaking terms with the modern drama, rather than 
in cultivating a fine cheerful spirit or a charming speak- 
ing voice. 

Every woman in this world can be *' cultured" though 
she never attended college or belonged to a culture club. 
The truly cultured woman is not the restless seeker after 
new distractions, but the woman who keeps a clean 
house, who puts good food on her table, who with a gen- 
tie voice speaks correct English, and who does not save 
up her good manners for "society", but exhibits them in 
her home. There is more culture in a well arranged 
table, laid with clean linen and china and bright silver, 
with perhaps a single flower in the center than in all the 
''culture movements" in the world. There is more cul- 
ture in a neat person, than in all the opinions concern- 
ing world affairs that a woman can collect. There is 
more culture in sweetness and amiability and refined 
ways than in a knowledge of a dozen systems of phil- 
osophy. There is more culture in knowing the meaning 
of Millet's ''Gleaners" in understanding the struggle of 
those three figures, the quick-moving girl, the slower 
woman and the stiff-backed grandmother, all striving to 
ward off hunger, than in owning the original. There 
is more culture in knowing and practicing the simple 
laws of hygiene than in covering up physical disintegra- 
tion by artificial means. 

A pretty good place to take a survey of American cul- 
ture is the dressing room of a Pullman car. All you 
have to do is to take a glance at your traveling sister's 
personal belongings, at the condition in which she leaves 

103 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

the wash-basin for the woman who is to follow her, at 
the way she tosses soiled towels on the floor, at the care- 
lessness with which she smears her make-up all over the 
place. If personal habits are not an indication of one's 
degree of culture, I do not know what criterion we have. 

What is a cultured home ? Is it not the home in which 
character and habits of refinement are formed? Is it 
not the home in which the children are taught to be hon- 
est ? Is it not the home from which the man of the fam- 
ily is ashamed to go out and play a mean business trick 
upon his competitor, or make a dirty dollar by the exer- 
cise of his brain? Is it not the home where kindness is 
the keynote and where quarreling and bickering are re- 
garded as unspeakably vulgar? 

Culture, friends, is in the substance, not the shadow. 
It resides in all fine and useful effort, rather than in 
what some misguided persons are pleased to call *' ele- 
gant leisure". And this I would like to impress upon 
all men and women — culture is not to be had at the ex- 
pense of some fellow-being who works for two that one 
may loaf. 



104 




MEASURING WOMAN'S SUCCESS 

HAT constitutes a woman 's success ? Is it social 
eminence? Is it conspicuous achievement in 
business, artistic, professional or political life? 
Or does the most substantial success come to 
the loving and beloved woman, who makes it her supreme 
office to cheer, encourage and inspire? Is the most suc- 
cessful woman she who is ever ready with her sympathy, 
who possesses exquisite refinement, unfailing good 
humor, charming courtesy and grace in an infinite va- 
riety ? 

As we look over all the women of our acquaintance, 
does it not seem that there are too many who deem it 
enough to go out in the world just as a man does, and 
make for themselves a considerable worldly success ? One 
woman possessed of business sagacity may open a store, 
buy and sell industriously, and at the end of the year, 
have a very tidy profit. Another may become an expert 
private secretary. A third may study law or medicine, 
and rise in one of those professions. A fourth gifted 
with remarkable talent for music attains international 
fame. The number of women who are achieving success 
in political life constantly is increasing. There are 
women authors and women artists. There are women 
devoting themselves to science. There are women trav- 
eling to sell goods. 

The majority of these women long to be successful as 
women — there are only a few who don 't care about that. 
Yet, a great many of those same women are losing sight 
of a fact which is quite obvious to men, that is, that 

105 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

there are certain separate and distinct feminine attri- 
butes which enter into the making of the womanly 
woman. They fail to appreciate the value of womanly 
graces. This lack of appreciation they betray in their 
voice, their language, their manners and their dress. 
They do not intend to allow themselves to become hard- 
ened — they merely drift with the tide of modern influ- 
ences and events. 

No woman could ever afford to neglect the womanly 
graces. She can afford that neglect less than ever today 
when her life is cast so frequently in places where com- 
petition is imminent, where keen commercial sagacity 
tends to displace womanly tenderness, and intellectual 
precision is too often cultivated at the expense of the 
qualities of the heart. A manner of brisk efficiency does 
very well in business, but it ought to be taken off and 
put away with one 's street hat — it is anything but charm- 
ing when it is carried into private life. 

Is it not significant that we have not today any great 
and immortal heroines in fiction such as were created by 
Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott? Shakespeare wrote 
only two or three plays that did not have one perfect 
woman in them. He gave us a score of exquisite char- 
acterizations — Rosalind, Desdemonia, Hermione, Imogen, 
Silvia, Viola, Helena and Virgilia — all conceived in the 
mold of a queenly womanhood. Sir Walter Scott gave 
us for our everlasting delight and refreshment such 
lovely feminine characters as Ellen Douglas, Diana Ver- 
non, Lilias Redgauntlet, Jeanie Deans and Flora Mclvor 
— all of whom he invested with the highest qualities of 
gentle womanhood. Our writers, it is true, draw for us 
many portraits of lovely women, but they do not give us 

106 



such vital characterizations. Is it that they have not 
such great powers of interpretation ? Is it because they 
cannot find the same inspiration in the noblest women 
of our day? Or can it be that as the world has grown, 
exquisite womanly characters have become so numerous 
that they no longer attract attention ? 

Certainly we would like to accept the third supposi- 
tion as that which is nearest the truth. And if it be so, 
it is the greater tribute to woman since it is no easy 
task for her to keep herself charming when she is sur- 
rounded with so many harsh, material influences. There 
is no use denying the fact that all playing at precedence, 
whether it be social, political; professional or commercial, 
does not incline women to the cultivation of the purely 
feminine graces. Fighting for worldly advantage, 
struggling to win the almighty dollar is likely to be any- 
thing but a softening process. Rather does it tend to 
confirm the best of women in habits of thought and man- 
ner that savor too strongly of the market-place. There 
is danger, too, of arrogance among commercially or pro- 
fessionally successful women, whom you sometimes hear 
speaking of love with contempt. This arrogance of self- 
sufficiency is very foolish, very unlovely. It is a terrible 
menace to the woman-soul. 

How are we women going to meet and ward off these 
unfortunate influences? By remembering that affection 
is woman's first grace, that refinement is her first duty, 
that the power to cheer is her greatest privilege. 

More good men and children go wrong from the lack 
of affection at home than all other causes put together. 
Harsh words have made many a drunkard and criminal. 
Lack of sympathy and understanding have sent many 

107 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

a young girl to her fall. When a woman has the grace 
of affection and she lavishes it upon her menfolk, she 
gives them something bigger than any bank accounts 
they can accumulate. When she lavishes it wisely upon 
her children, she can defeat the most malignant influ- 
ences. And, if it were not for the innate refinement of 
women, this world would still be inhabited by barbaric 
hordes. 

If a woman's family and intimate friends cannot look 
to her for sympathy, gentleness, cheerfulness and in- 
spiration ; if she is not the soul of refinement ; if she does 
not possess that endless variety of graces which we like 
to think of as synonymous with queenly womanhood — 
then she is a failure as a woman, however successful she 
may be in other ways. 



108 




IP YOU COULD LIVE AGAIN 

HEY were speculating upon what they would 
do if they had their lives to live over — a group 
of a half dozen women, all well enough ac- 
quainted to speak without restraint. Who of 
us has not wished for an opportunity to live again 
in the light of mature wisdom and experience? Which 
one of us does not sometimes feel regret over some folly 
of our youth, which we would not have committed had 
we known better. Futile longing though it is, we would 
all like to have that one more opportunity to work out 
our destiny and we are sure that we would do it much 
more successfully, if the chance were only ours. 

''If I had my life to live over, I would not be in such 
haste to marry", said one — and what a common com- 
plaint is that! ''I would try to know the man thor- 
oughly before I cast my lot with his. I would restrain 
my emotions long enough to let my head make the deci- 
sion. I am a believer in long engagements. They are 
not always favorable to marriage and so much the better, 
for if an attachment will not stand the test of a long 
betrothal, it will not stand the longer and greater test 
of married life. More restrictions should be thrown 
about marriage. It is much too easy to get a license and 
find a minister who will tie the knot. Letting my heart 
run away with my judgment has been the great mistake 
of my life". 

''I can trace about nine-tenths of all my sorrows and 
mistakes to snobbish notions of my youth ' ', declared the 
second woman in the group. ''I seem to have been 

109 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

reared on a false sense of values. I was always looking 
for the glittering, showy thing, not the real substance of 
life. I believe this snobbish tendency was first en- 
gendered in me by my mother, who if she made a gar- 
ment for me would warn me not to let that fact be- 
come known. I grew up believing that the only people 
worth knowing were those prominent in society and those 
who had plenty of money to spend. Worldly success, 
both social and financial, was the one aim and goal of 
my life. A loss of everything I had once deemed in- 
valuable — money, position, the flattering attentions of 
society — has made me a wiser woman than I was. The 
very things of which I was formerly so enamored have 
very little attraction for me now. I have learned that a 
good many people of similar ambition live with much 
profit to the dressmaker, the florist, the caterer, the mil- 
liner and the confectioner, but with very little profit to 
themselves. False standards of living, set up by snob- 
bishness, have undermined many an otherwise sound 
character. They discount genuineness, and place a pre- 
mium upon the superficial. I have outgrown that kind 
of folly and have begun my life all over again. I have 
found peace in the discharge of simple duty, and happi- 
ness in the quiet ways of home." 

''My greatest regret is that I did not take advantage 
of my opportunity to secure a good education when it 
was presented to me", said the third woman. ''In my 
girlhood I was so obsessed with the desire to have a good 
time that I never suspected the day might come when I 
would need a sound education. As a result of my folly, 
I am now striving to grasp certain fundamentals I 
should have mastered in my youth. I am trying to ac- 

110 



IP YOU COULD LIVE AGAIN 

qnire mental habits that should have become second 
nature to me when I was no more than 20 years old. I 
am doing the very thing I was sure I would not do. I 
am earning my living. If I had seized every chance for 
self-improvement as I was maturing, life would be a 
good deal easier for me now.'* 

"If I had my life to live over again, I would have gra- 
ciously accepted Destiny as she was revealed to me", de- 
clared the fourth speaker. ''I would have taken her 
hand and walked with her instead of resisting her with 
all my might. For years I exhausted my strength trying 
to out-general her. I seared my mind and wasted my 
body trying to make her dance to my tune. I spent my 
youth devouring biographies of the great and near-great, 
and reading books on self-mastery and the conquest of 
fate. Resolved that I would conquer the world and my 
own destiny, I sweat blood in a series of futile efforts. 
In my violence I almost destroyed myself. But since I 
have made a friend instead of an antagonist of destiny, 
I feel that I am beginning to make a little progress and 
I am much happier than I ever have been." 

What can we get from these four human stories ? Just 
this — that we cannot think, feel or act at 20 as we will 
at 40 — and learning how to live is what life is for. 



Ill 



MISTAKEN SELF-SACRIFICE 

l^jJWklNE of those dear mothers who longs to sacrifice 
1^^^ everything to the happiness of her children 
|3^i has written to me that with the high cost of 
commodities she has been unable to buy a 
spring hat and she has not so much as an old shape she 
could trim up. 

"After buying organdie dresses, slippers and ribbons 
for my two girls", she says, "there is absolutely nothing 
left for me. Because I have no hat, I am forced to staj'^ 
at home. I cannot accept any kind of invitation, and I 
cannot even go to church", she comments pathetically. 

In her desire to be unselfish, what a mistake this 
mother makes! Cannot she realize that the mother is 
the head of the family, that she must take precedence 
over her daughters, that a hat for herself is a necessity, 
while organdie dresses and pretty slippers and ribbons 
fall into the luxury class ? 

Time after time we have seen mothers go shabby in 
order to deck out their daughters like young princesses, 
and what has been the result ? 

The daughters in their youthful ignorance, naturally 
enough reach the conclusion that they are superior to 
their mothers, that good clothes are their proper due, 
regardless of how their mothers dress. 

Now, this one foolish assumption would be unfortunate 
enough in itself, if no other evil resulted from a mother's 
mistaken policy of abject self-sacrifice. But as things go 
in this world, a whole train of little evils grow out of a 
girl's idea that she is better than her mother. Very eas- 

112 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

ily, she falls into the way of thinking that her mother 
does not need suitable clothes, that it is quite the proper 
thing for her mother to stay at home from a tea or a 
luncheon, a meeting of her club or a gathering in her 
church. She solaces herself with the reflection that her 
mother has had her day, that she, the young woman is 
entitled to the right of way in all matters of family ex- 
penditure, that there is nothing essentially improper or 
unnatural about her being a lily of the field while her 
mother toils and spins. 

When a mother once permits her daughter to lose re- 
spect for her, the girl, unless she possesses a good deal of 
innate refinement and nobility of character, is likely to 
speak disrespectfully to her mother and to treat her 
mother with unconcern. Heartless impudence has fallen 
to the lot of many an over-indulgent mother, who out of 
a foolish desire to see her daughter beautifully gowned 
and having the opportunity to move in a circle to which 
the family has not been accustomed, just because she has 
deliberately accepted the position of an inferior in her 
own family, and has permitted herself to be snubbed. 
''How sharper than a serpent's tooth" becomes the bur- 
den of her thinking, after the damage has been done, 
when it is too late to recall the daughter to a proper 
sense of values in the relation that she bears to her 
mother, and when she has become so accustomed to 
dressing beyond and above her station that she no 
longer can be satisfied with simpler and more appropri- 
ate clothes. 

All children want to be proud of their parents. 

"Mother, how pretty you look tonight!" 

It is with a heart swelling with pride that a child looks 
113 



MISTAKEN SELP-SACRIPICE 

upon the mother^ who for some special occasion has 
donned a new frock, or has taken greater pains than 
usual with her toilette. Bitterness and shame have 
silently eaten their way into many a childish heart be- 
cause father and mother were careless about their ap- 
pearance, because it did not seem to matter to them how 
they looked to other eyes. 

Mothers who go shabby to deck out their daughters, 
cheat those very same daughters out of a child's dearest 
source of pride — the pride they feel in their mothers, 
their desire to see their own mothers stand favorable 
comparison with the mothers of other girls. 

Nothing means so much to a normal child as to be 
proud of a parent. During the life of the parent, it is 
a never-ending source of filial satisfaction, and it is a 
beautiful memory after death. 

Mothers — don't buy organdies and ribbons for your 
daughters and go without decent hats and dresses for 
yourselves. If you do, you will surely rue the day you 
were so foolish. Not only will you lose the respect of 
your children, and possibly your husband's, but you 
will forfeit the respect of your neighbors and friends. 



114 




THE ART OP GROWING OLD 

CCASIONALLY you see an elderly man or 
woman so interesting and so interested in what 
is going on today, so cheerful and buoyant, so 
charming of manner, attractively and appro- 
priately dressed, that you wonder why everyone in the 
world cannot grow old gracefully. 

As a matter of fact, to grow old gracefully, you have 
to begin when you are young. Growing old gracefully is 
like learning a trade, acquiring a profession or getting 
an education — it is not a thing to be attained in a few 
weeks, months or even years, and it is extremely difficult 
when it is begun late in life. Every time I hear young 
people bewailing the disagreeable habits of their elders, 
and criticizing the irritable tempers of the old people 
in their family circle, justifiable as their criticisms may 
be, I cannot h^lp wondering if they too, may not be 
forming habits of mind, manner and speech which event- 
ually will render them tiresome and disagreeable persons 
when they reach old age. 

The secret of growing old gracefully is to build a 
beautiful and gracious character during the days of 
one 's youth and maturity. The pretty young girl whose 
jealousy and envy of her associates vents itself in sharp 
criticism of their dress and conduct, position and posses- 
sions; the middle-aged woman who gossips disagreeably 
and rolls every bit of scandal she can hear like a sweet 
morsel under her tongue; the man who swears at the 
slightest provocation, who is irritable and captious, who 

115 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

commits little mean, treacherous acts — all of these are 
preparing for an old age that will be hypercritical, fault- 
finding, censorious, and unappreciative. For every time 
they indulge themselves in an unkind act, in an ugly 
humor, they are approaching just one step nearer to the 
goal of an unloved and unlovely old age. 

We have a right, I believe, to expect elderly men and 
women to be the most tenderly appealing, the most 
reassuring, the most comforting, the most kindly and 
tolerant persons of earth. They have passed by that 
time when the hyenas of passion tore them. They have 
fought life's many battles, sometimes to win, sometimes 
to lose. They have known sorrow and grief and disap- 
pointment. They have experienced happiness and tri- 
umph and success. They have dodged death and they 
have conquered sickness. They have seen life ebb and 
ebb and finally flicker out in their dearest, and their tears 
have fallen into open graves. They have known love's 
disillusionment and love's realization. They have spent 
sleepless nights and joyous days. They have striven to 
the very utmost of human striving, if they were men 
and women of ambition and aspiration. They have seen 
the very structures they built with so much labor crum- 
ble and fall at their feet. Knowing life as they must 
know it, how it is possible that they can be otherwise 
than sympathetic and understanding and charitable? 
To no human souls do we turn with such yearning for 
sympathy and reassurance as to older men and women. 
Yet, how often do they offer us the stones of folly and 
sarcasm and complaining and bitterness when we hoped 
for the bread of wisdom and kindness, the comforting 
and reassuring word. 

116 



THE ART OP GROWING OLD 

Is the idea of swelling the ranks of disagreeable, un- 
loved, unwanted old folk abhorrent to you? 

Then, you must begin early to cultivate a life-long 
habit of generous and thoughtful consideration of every- 
body with whom you come in contact. 

Beauty, brilliancy, talent, power, position, money will 
stand you in hand when you are young. The world will 
forgive you many disagreeable and unlovely traits of 
character and ugly habits so long as you have your 
youthful strength and magnetism. But it won't for- 
give you when old age takes possession of you, and you 
have nothing better to give than material things. 

It is all very well to talk about revering old people, 
but reverence is not prompted or governed by a sense 
of duty. True reverence for the elderly and delight in 
their presence can spring only from such sentiments of 
love and loyalty and admiration as they, by their kind 
hearts, gracious manners and good breeding, can in- 
spire in us. 



117 



A FORTUNE IN FRIENDS 

««|^^nE FRIENDS with everybody". Such is the 
ra^Pj advice Charles M. Schwab gave the students 

P^^^ of Princeton University when he stood be- 
fore them and pointed them to the way of 
building a successful life. 

''When you have friends", he said, "you know there 
is somebody who will stand by you. You know the old 
saying that if you have a single enemy you will find him 
every^vhere. It doesn't pay to make enemies. Lead the 
life that will make you kindly and friendly to everybody 
about you, and you will be surprised at what a happy life 
you will live." 

Most of us think too little about the value of making 
friends. When I write these words, I do not mean that 
we should start out with the idea that we are going to 
make friends whom we can use for our own selfish pur- 
poses, for if we do that we soon will be found out, and 
we will have no friends at all. We all know certain men 
who have made a business of cultivating those persons 
whom they believe will be useful to them, and how few 
friendships such men enjoy. If we want to make friends 
we should go about it in the hope of adding something 
to the sum total of this world's happiness, and not with 
the idea of securing selfish benefits for ourselves. 

However, the fine things that may come to us through 
the friendships we establish are not to be minimized. 

Have you ever noticed that it is the man who has the 
ability to make friends with all sorts and conditions of 
people who is sought out by big business institutions and 

118 



A FORTUNE IN FRIENDS 

is entrusted with an important place? That man may 
know absolutely nothing about that particular line of 
business. But, the men who seek him consider his lack 
of technical knowledge unimportant That is something 
he can acquire. It is for his fine, rich personality that 
the business wants him. Where at the start his tech- 
nical knowledge may be negligible, his faculty for draw- 
ing men to him will be worth many thousands of dollars 
to the firm. And have you ever noticed that it is the 
woman who creates an atmosphere of friendliness about 
her who is in demand on all occasions? She may not 
have very much money, and she may have only two or 
three gowns, but she knows how to make others happy, 
and that is what this world really wants. 

It is worth while to give a little thought to those per- 
sons who make friends wherever they go. It is worth 
while noticing that they nearly always wear happy ex- 
pressions, which is merely the outward, visible sign of 
their goodness of heart. When they shake hands with 
you, they do it heartily — they do not offer you a cold, 
clammy, listless palm. There is a ring of sincerity in 
their cordial words of greeting. There is a sort of aura 
of amity about them which you sense instantly. You 
are warmed, comforted, even electrified in their pres- 
ence. No matter how weary or distracted you may have 
been feeling, after basking in the glow of their friend- 
liness, you say to yourself, ' ' What a good world this is, 
after all". 

In some periods of the lives of all of us, we stand in 
sore need of friends. We are stricken with siclmess. 
We lose our money. We face a crisis in our domestic 
affairs or in our business life. The ones that we love 

119 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

best become afflicted, or they are taken from us. Then, 
friendship comes to allay our sorrows, to lighten our 
oppressions, to dispel our doubts, to clarify our troubled 
minds. And when friendship does so lift the burden, 
what an unspeakable blessing we know it to be. Any- 
thing, everything seems endurable, and we take a new 
grip on life. 

Don't wait to accumulate a fortune before you begin 
to make friends. Don't postpone it until you have se- 
cured a certain amount of leisure. Don't put it off until 
you become prosperous or prominent — for in the mean- 
time your heart may dry up. Just take the opportuni- 
ties that come to you in the course of your daily living 
to smile, to say a kind and encouraging word, to render 
some little personal service, to express some appreciation, 
to radiate a love of all people. An open, lovable soul, 
a rich heart, a kindly feeling toward everybody will 
make you a millionaire in friendships though you may 
have less money than anyone that you know. 



120 



iii 



LOOKING UP INTO THE SKY 

YOU ever lie down on the grass and look up 
into the sky? If you don't, you are missing 
that which would do your heart and soul good. 
Looking up into the vastness of blue heaven is 
one way of escaping sharp trouble and slow anxiety. 
With most of us, looking up into the sky is a lost art. 
As we go about our business, we either keep our eyes on 
the earth, or look straight ahead. Days, weeks and 
months may pass without our once turning our glance 
upward, which is the worst of all possible ways to live. 
Things would go better in this world if more of us 
would take an occasional view of the sky. Looking up 
into the sky will do two things to you. Its vastness re- 
minds you of the smallness of the world and the passing 
value of mundane things. Suddenly, you realize how 
narrow has been your human vision, how cramped and 
prejudiced your mind. Then it comes to you that you 
cannot keep a fair perspective if you persist in keeping 
your eyes on the earth, on the quarrels and contests of 
equally prejudiced human beings, and never turn your 
eyes heavenward. 

The second thing that looking into the sky can do for 
you is to stimulate your imagination, and imagination 
as we know, is the transmuting force of the world. 
Imagination, combined with reason, is the basis of in- 
vention. The Wright brothers had to imagine an airship 
before they could start to build one. It was necessary 
for Fulton to imagine a steamboat before he could get 
one under way. In imagination the child plans what he 

121 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

will do when he grows to man's estate. The young girl 
imagines how she will leave her home, either to marry or 
follow a career. Actors, writers and artists always are 
living in imagination that time when they will have 
captivated the world. They study and work. They 
labor until body and brain are numb. They forget 
passing pleasure and material advantage. They sacrifice 
everything for that future goal which they can see so 
vividly far away though it may be. The politician 
imagines himself a great statesman. The mother dreams 
of what her children will attain at some future day. 
Those who never grow^ w^eary of looking skyward are 
those that finally reach the pot of gold at the rainbow's 
end. It is the dispirited soul, he who succumbs to his 
weariness and who forgets that he may look skyward 
that droops and finally fails. 

A reporter of the peace conference attributes Lloyd 
George's strength at the peace table and his amazing 
success in enforcing Great Britain's claims to the fact 
that he occasionally slipped away from Paris, crossed 
the channel, traveled to his rural villa and for several 
days lay on the ground, looked up at the sky — and 
thought. When he returned to Paris, his body refreshed, 
his mind having a clearer view of the situation, he was 
a match for them all. Certain other representatives at 
the peace table, who never withdrew for an hour's re- 
pose, or better still to look up into the sky, became con- 
fused and lost ground. If you w^ill watch the best busi- 
ness men in this country, and the best politicians, you 
will notice that they give themselves a chance to think 
things over, to right themselves, even though they take 
some other method than looking up into the sky. 

122 



LOOKING UP INTO THE SKY 

If the haunting dread of possible failure visits you— 
lie down on the grass and look up into the sky. Your 
spirits are bound to revive and your sense of proportion 
will be restored. I believe that the sky is that part of 
creation which the God of nature made for the purpose 
of comforting and inspiring man. I believe that men 
would incline more to justice, that they would try to 
be more scrupulous and compassionate, if once in a 
while they would lift their eyes to the skies. You can 
hardly turn your eyes from the earth to the heavens 
without thinking of your future, what you will have to 
take with you to the next world, and how you will enter 
upon your life there. 

Sensitive persons who long to find life more lovely and 
harmonious may temporarily escape the clogging condi- 
tions of their existence by looking up into the sky. 
Those who are harassed and worried will find in its blue 
infinity a blessed ecstacy of peace. Those who strive and 
struggle for perfection will have their hopes renewed. 

You hardly can look at the sky without realizing the 
folly of being selfish, greedy, treacherous or spiteful and 
without seeing at the same time the beauty in noble con- 
duct, in a kindly, sweet-tempered life. The horror of 
sordid living and thinking will grow upon you. You will 
perceive that no happiness can lie in the direction of an 
unvaried program of self-serving, that you will not ex- 
tend the range of your ideals that way or get an inkling 
of the divine. 

If you have had the patience to read thus far, you 
may say, *'Why, I have no time for such nonsense. The 
woman does not know what she says". 

Then, I will recall to you the life of Joseph, how his 
128 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

brethren seeing him approaching from the distance, said 
in a tone of contempt, "Behold, this dreamer cometh. 
Let us slay him and cast him into some pit and see what 
will become of his dreams". When they could not slay 
him they sold him into slaverj^ Little did they suspect 
then that the day was to come when they would stand 
before him, their peer, that he in his generosity would 
forgive them and entertain them royally. 

This experience of looking up at the sky, and seeing 
things brighter and clearer and better, is just as real an 
experience as eating or drinking. It gives you an in- 
creased sense of the largeness and richness of life. It 
brings you a deliverance beyond your dreams. 



124 




ROSES AND THE LIFE OP MAN 

ACH morn a thousand roses brings" sang 
Omar as he looked out upon a Persian gar- 
den. When we come to think of it, what 
would this world be without its roses? Roses 
have been loved by every generation since the beginning 
of time. The ancients wove them into chaplets and used 
them at every festival and sacrifice. Long before the 
moderns tuned their lyres to sing of the beauty and 
fragrance of roses, their loveliness was being celebrated 
in Persia, Arabia, Greece and Rome. The Greeks and 
the Romans so loved the rose that it was associated with 
every important event in their lives, from the cradle to 
the grave. The Egyptians once sent a whole shipload 
of roses to a Roman emperor in the belief that they 
would make the most acceptable tribute they could offer. 
At Roman banquets the walls were hung with garlands 
of roses, and every attendant wore them. Wealthy 
Roman aristocrats emulated the example of emperors 
by having their homes adorned with fresh roses every 
morning during the season. We get our familiar ex- 
pression, ''a bed of roses", from those Roman sybarites 
who had their beds filled with roses instead of feathers 
or down. Since that time, the bed of roses has been 
synonymous with comfort, happiness and luxury. Not 
only were roses used by the aristocrats — they were loved 
and used by the people. The same girl who is making 
her living as a stenographer today, made it in the time 
of the Roman empire by making garlands of roses which 
had a ready sale. Just as we send flowers to the dead, 

125 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

SO did the ancients pile them upon the catafalque. Roses 
were considered so necessary for the commemoration of 
the departed that those who were too poor to purchase 
roses to put on the graves of their beloved w^ould place 
a request over the tomb, asking the wealthy passerby to 
bestow upon it the gift of a flower. Many wealthy per- 
sons would make bequests to charitable institutions, pro- 
viding that an offering of roses be made annually in 
memory of the testators. 

For centuries the rose has been the symbol of victory 
and the conquering hero has been decorated with roses 
upon his return from victorious wars. When the first 
American troops marched through the streets of Paris 
they walked over a carpet of roses, strewn in their way 
by the French who were almost delirious wdth joy over 
the coming of *4es Americains". Those same heroes 
returning to America, were showered once more with 
rosebuds, by their mothers, wives, sisters, sweethearts 
and admiring friends. 

Here is something all men know, though they some- 
times forget it — that in cultivating flowers and growing 
trees, they cultivate themselves. Man cannot work 
without thinking, and when he works among roses, he 
must perceive that he is, indeed, a part of nature, and 
that if he is to achieve happiness or success, he must 
co-operate with her. If the corner grocery infldel would 
quit whittling and talking long enough to cultivate a 
rose garden, he might in that garden discover the unity 
and oneness of nature and the mastership which controls 
and regulates all. For the man of nature who has seen 
God in the burning bush of ripening autumn, and who 
realizes that the same divinity is made manifest in the 

126 



ROSES AND THE LIFE OP MAN 

delicately flushed petal of the rose, senses his kinship 
with flowers, trees, vine and shrubbery and for that 
reason, he better understands his mission in the world. 
It is good for us impecunious strugglers with the 
dragging weariness of the world upon us to walk once in 
a while in a rose garden and to be made to feel there 
that we should take off our shoes, that being holy ground. 
Grosser materialists we would be if it were not for 
nature, the truest of idealists and the greatest of poets. 
Once we get away from the city street, with its stone 
and iron, she speaks to the imagination and creates in 
us the very feelings the material world seeks to destroy. 
In such moments we come to know that it is nature's 
blue skies, her green trees and fields and her gardens of 
roses that in the feverish rush of life keep us reasonably 
sane. 



127 




WHAT A TEACHER CAN DO 

ON'T you make a plea to the school teachers 
to instruct their pupils in kindness, polite- 
ness and gentle speech?" mothers have asked 
me again and again. Sometimes we wonder 
if teachers realize what a tremendous influence they 
exert over their pupils, if they understand what a force 
they are for molding the lives of boys and girls. 

Almost six hours a day, the best and most alert hours 
of a child's life are spent in the school-room, under the 
control and influence of a teacher. After a child has 
reached the school age; the mother has not much more 
opportunity to influence her children than has the 
teacher. And the very fact that the school influence is 
away from and outside the home renders it the more 
profound. 

As I look back over my life, I realize that I was 
profoundly affected by three or four teachers to whom 
I went to school. This, it seems to me is significant — 
that the teachers I recall vividly and those who perma- 
nently influenced my thinking, were those women who 
continually filled me with the desire to be as fine as they 
were themselves. All the rest remain a blank to me — 
I could not even recall their names. I believe that this 
is true of most persons. The good is a living memory 
with us. The bad, unless it is very bad, and the indif- 
ferent, pass from our minds. 

When a teacher builds character while she is drilling 
children in the rudiments of writing and geography and 
arithmetic and spelling, she renders a service for which 

128 



WHAT A TEACHER CAN DO 

no money can pay. The teacher who holds up before her 
pupils an example of politeness, kindness, honesty, fair- 
ness and justice is performing a service that will not 
only affect the lives of these children, but all the lives 
that in any way touch theirs. For what does it profit 
us if we recoive a one-sided education, if the mind is 
cultivated to the neglect of the heart? What does it 
matter if we assimilate all the learning of all the ages, 
and have not fine dispositions and characters? As a 
matter of fact, a keen, well-trained and highly educated 
mind with no character or conscience to balance it, is the 
most dangerous of all forces in the world. It can work 
more havoc than 100 ignorant criminals. 

The very children who have not been inspired to great 
reverence for their parents will look up to a teacher and 
try to imitate her if she be a woman of refiinement and 
beautiful character. This is particularly true of boys 
who easily form a semi-romantic attachment for a 
teacher, especially if she is a woman of personal charm. 
Little girls, too, sensitive and impressionable as they are, 
are deeply affected by the atmosphere of the school-room 
and either blight or blossom in it. A strident-voiced, 
bad-tempered, coarse-natured woman in the school-room 
is just as great a moral menace to the children as a 
woman of fine nature and cultivated manners is uplift- 
ing and inspiring to those under her care. 

This much must be said about the obligation of the 
teacher to exercise a noble influence over her pupils — 
no teacher, however gifted can entirely overcome the in- 
fluence of a bad and shiftless home. The time to begin 
teaching children the golden rule and good manners is 
in their babyhood. If a mother neglects her children for 

129 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

six years, she must not expect that the school teacher 
shall undo all the damage she has done. The tendency 
of woman to shift to the school-room the responsibilities 
and duties they should be assuming is entirely too prev- 
alent. Too many mothers are expecting the school 
teacher to train their children in manners and morals 
simply because they are too lazy to undertake that task. 
This is the perfect combination — the mother teaching 
her children kindness, politeness, fairness and- honesty, 
and the teacher carrying along and amplifying that in- 
struction — refinement and character in the home envi- 
ronment, and the same things in the school. 



130 




GRAY HAIRS AND OPPORTUNITY 

HIS is a young man's world — that much is 
plain", declared a man just past middle age, 
with an air of profound discouragement. 
''The good places all go to the young folk, 
and only the left-overs fall to men of my years". 

There is no more pathetic sight in this world than 
gray-haired men and women going about in search of 
suitable positions and becoming more and more dis- 
couraged as they are turned away, or are given in- 
ferior jobs. 

When one of these discouraged men comes to you for 
advice, it is very easy from the vantage point of your 
own competence to tell him to brace up, that if he wants 
to land a good job he must look prosperous and cheer- 
ful, that he must carry himself with an air of confidence, 
and though he be rejected again and again he must not 
permit himself to become discouraged, that he must go 
right on in the assurance that he is destined to the reali- 
zation of his best hopes. 

It is not so easy, however, for your patient to take 
this advice. It is not easy to be enthusiastic when you 
have been turned down repeatedly. It is anything but 
easy to look cheerful when money is growing scarcer 
and scarcer, and prospects are by no means bright. 

Added to the difficulties of the spirit are those of the 
flesh. Men do not obtain a hearing readily when they 
have passed their prime. The world of business is in- 
terested in young men and their possibilities. The em- 
ployer knows that a young man is more pliable than an 

131 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

old one, that he is quicker and more energetic, more 
capable of assimilating new ideas. He also knows that 
an old man feels like taking life more easily, that he is 
not so willing to brave physical hardships or to endure 
exposure, and that he will feel the effects of intense effort 
much sooner than the young. 

In the face of these conditions, what can an old man 
do ? First, he must create an illusion of youth. If his 
hair be white, he should keep it cropped closely. A 
shaggy white head suggests that the possessor has seen 
his best days. A few days grovrth of stubby white beard, 
too, will add years to his appearance. It is sheer mad- 
ness for the older man, looking for a job, to permit even 
his best friend to see him with a day's growth of beard 
on his face. If he has never formed the habit of good- 
grooming, it will not be an easy task for him, when he 
has passed middle-life and he is lacking the stimulus of 
success. Yet, forming that habit may be a matter of 
life or death to him, just a case of sink or swim. Un- 
kempt hair, unclean clothing, sagging shoulders and a 
slouching gait will kill any man 's chance of employment. 
No employer wants to be greeted with signs of decrepti- 
tude, and if he happens to be a young man himself, he 
will be even more impatient with the appearance of old 
age. One day I saw a man in financial difficulty, wear- 
ing a coat, threefourths of the hem of which was ripped 
out and hanging. While that man may not have been 
able to buy a new suit, he could have had the hem sewed 
back, if he had to do it himself. He could have had his 
frayed cuffs turned in, though he w^ere obliged to be 
his own tailor. 

After a man has looked well to his outward appear- 

132 



GRAY HAIRS AND OPPORTUNITY 

ance, he must turn his attention to his mental attitude. 
He must realize that he will stand a very poor chance of 
landing a good position if when he is about to apply for 
it, he says to himself, ' ' I really do not expect to get this 
position — it's bound to go to a younger man. About all 
I can do is to ask for it, and run the chance that it will 
fall my way". For a flabby purpose will "buy" him 
notliing. He dare not sag mentally or physically. He 
must appear fresh, aggressive, self-sufficient. If they 
have quite died, he must rekindle the fires of ambition. 
He must have the courage to say to himself, as I heard 
one of these more than middle-aged men in search of a 
job, declare, *' Nothing can keep me down". 

With all that we have learned within the last 25 years 
about living longer and keeping younger, we have a long 
way to go. The ancients must have known much more 
about it than we do, for Adam lived 950 years, Enoch 
365 years, Lamech 777 years and Jared 962 years. 

What is wrong with our system that we lost our pep 
and fire and ambition just at that point in life when we 
begin to feel that we have learned how to live? 



138 



BUSINESS WOMEN FOR WIVES 



BUSINESS man who employs many young 
women and who is not so busy counting his 
profits that he has no time to think of the 
future welfare and happiness of the women in 
his employ, tries to impress upon them this fact which 
is obvious to him — the more efficient a woman is in the 
handling of her work, the higher type of man she at- 
tracts and the better are her chances for making a good 
marriage. 

''Every few weeks one of my girls leaves my service 
to take a life job", he said to me. "I am very much 
interested in their marrying well and happily. Close ob- 
servation over a long period of years has convinced me 
that the more skillful a girl is at her work, the higher 
type of man she is likely to marry, while the girl who 
is careless and slip-shod about her work usually attracts 
a man of like caliber. 

Every normal woman wants to marry, and she wants 
to make the best marriage that she can. Therefore, the 
far-seeing woman of business strives to attain the high- 
est possible efficiency in her work, not only for the pur- 
pose of making her services indispensable to her em- 
ployer, not only for the reason that increased efficiency 
means a bigger pay envelope and consequently, a greater 
degree of comfort, security and pleasure for herself, but 
with the idea of making herself both attractive and in- 
teresting to the better class of men with whom she be- 
comes acquainted in her business life. 

A man^s opportunity for sounding a woman's char- 

134 



BUSINESS WOMEN FOR WIVES 

acter and disposition and for observing her ability is 
ten times greater in business than in social life. The 
woman in society appears only on occasions and then 
usually on dress parade. She is in a position always to 
put her best foot forward, and she has leisure to prepare 
herself to present an excellent appearance. She is not, 
like the business woman, under fire, all of the time. She 
does not have to stand the test of the very early morning 
hours when few of us are at our best. Neither is she 
betrayed by a daily endurance run, and the wear and 
tear upon her good looks and her disposition as a hard 
working day comes to its close. 

For the very reason that the business woman is bound 
to become known for what she is by her men associates, 
it behooves her to remember that insofar as she makes 
good in business, men who come to know her naturally 
will reach the conclusion that she could also make good 
in home life. The business woman who is faithful to 
her work, who is not continually asking for half -holidays 
and extra hours off is not likely when she marries, to 
gad about aimlessly at the expense of her home-life. The 
business woman who is accurate, neat and painstaking 
at her work probably will keep a neat, clean, well-ordered 
home. If she is conscientious about her work and ever 
watchful to promote the interest of her employers, the 
chances are that she will be equally conscientious as a 
wife, and that she will take a lively interest in the suc- 
cess and progress of her husband. If she is invariably 
courteous to men and women who call upon her em- 
ployer, always trying to serve them in his absence, you 
may depend upon it, she will cultivate her husband's 
friends and entertain them cheerfully. The business 

136 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

woman who does not buy more than she can afford and 
who is prompt in the payment of her debts does not 
easily develop into the wife who continually nags her 
husband for more spending money than he properly can 
give her, nor will she run him into debt. When a busi- 
ness woman keeps sweet in spite of the numerous and 
sundry irritations that arise in business, and does not 
lose her poise under ordinary provocation, she is not 
likely to fly into a tantrum every time her husband hap- 
pens to differ from her in opinion or fails to put in his 
appearance for dinner at the appointed hour. The 
woman who by her conduct and the quality of her work 
wins and holds the respect of her employer, year in and 
year out, is pretty sure to keep the respect of her hus- 
band for a life-time. Also, the woman who manifests a 
steady pride in her appearance, and who invariably is 
immaculately neat and clean in store or office will not 
fall readily into the kimono habit after marriage, or 
neglect her hair, her skin, her hands and finger nails 
when she has retired to the comparative seclusion of her 
own home. 

Since business has become Cupid 's first lieutenant and 
more marriages are made every year through association 
in the store, office and counting room than through ac- 
quaintances in the ball room, the drawing room and on 
the golf course, every woman of marriageable age who 
has a pay envelope would do well to remember that as 
she qualifies for success in her business career, so is she 
likely to be judged as to her fitness for wifehood. 



136 




MEN ''FORGETTING" TO PROPOSE 

HERE is a little story, but a deeply human story 
that has been written thousands of times. It 
is the old, familiar story of the man who makes 
ardent love to a girl, who flatters and cajoles 
her, who says everything a lover can say excepting a 
proposal of marriage, and who while prot^^sting his de- 
votion with singular bravery, suddenly becomes timid 
when it comes to signing his name to a love letter. 

Many a young girl deludes herself with the strange 
idea that the man who has the courage to declare his love 
is such a modest, shrinking violet that he cannot possibly 
have the hardihood to ask her to become his wife. 
Strangely enough, it does not occur to her that the man 
who possesses the prowess to tell her that she is the most 
charming of creatures, that she is the only girl he ever 
loved, that he does not know how he is to go on without 
her, that he thinks of her in every waking hour, that his 
love for her is like some rare and holy flame, might also 
perform the heroic feat of asking her to marry him, if 
that is what he really wants. 

I am one who never could put much faith in that 
diverting story of Miles Standish who was so timid that 
he commissioned John Alden to propose for him to the 
fair Priscilla. It is one of those pretty fictions that have 
little to do with real life. It is not masculine to be 
timid. I cannot believe there is one man worthy of the 
name who fails in courage when he wants to declare him- 
self. It is a pretty safe rule to follow, that if a man 
has not enough spirit to propose marriage to the girl he 

137 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

loves, he won't have enough spirit to take good care of 
her after he gets her. He is a weakling and she cannot 
make anything else of him. If all of the young and in- 
experienced women could be convinced of the truth of 
this statement, there would be far fewer tragedies in the 
form of broken hearts and ruined lives. 

The very generosity of woman's nature beguiles her 
into misunderstanding and mistake. She imagines that 
the man, poor thing, njeeds to be courted, that he is suf- 
fering for a little encouragement from her. I'll never 
forget the pathetic appeal of a postal card note written 
by a trusting girl to a man who doubtless had quite for- 
gotten her in the light of another's beaming eyes. ''It 
has been so long", she wrote, ** since I have heard a word 
from you that I have made up my mind you must be 
sick". Nothing is more difficult for the girl-heart to 
grasp than the cruel possibility of her having been sup- 
planted in the affections of a man to whom she has 
given her heart. She can imagine a thousand ills and 
evils that may have overtaken him. The last thing that 
she can believe is that he never really cared for her and 
that the minute she was out of his sight, he quite forgot 
her. One time in a thousand the man will have been 
sick, or for some other legitimate reason, unable to com- 
municate with his sweetheart, but in the other 999 cases, 
it will have been a matter of sheer indifference. 

Despite the fact that women are fast achieving polit- 
ical and industrial equality, men are still the lords of 
this world. The man who loves is not afraid to tell it, 
and the man who wants to marry will somehow summon 
the courage to say that, too. 

Here is something for girls to remember — no man fails 

138 



MEN FORGETTING TO PROPOSE 

to sign his name to a love letter because of forgetfulness. 
There is something distinctly mean and small and sneak- 
ing about the unsigned love letter, and it deserves the 
same consideration that should be accorded the anony- 
mous letter of attack. There is just one fitting place for 
it and that is the waste basket. The writer of the un- 
signed love letter is the same brand of coward as the 
writer of the unsigned letter of abuse or attack. 

Girls — don't waste your precious sympathy upon the 
man who says everything but the one thing that you are 
waiting for him to say. Many a sweet young girl has 
gone to her doom because she took that one thing for 
granted, because she believed that the man honestly loved 
her though he failed to propose. 

The only thing that makes a man too diffident to pro- 
pose to a girl who is attractive and interesting to him is 
his unwillingness to assume the care of a wife and pos- 
sible family. No man who truly loves lacks the courage 
to tell it, and no man who wants to make a woman his 
wife will hesitate long before breaking the news to her. 



139 




POETRY IN LIFE'S PROSE 

HE impossible has happened. There has been 
one man in the world who found "a perfect 
wife". This is what he said of her in his last 
will and testament: "I want to say to the 
world that my wife, in my estimation, is the most perfect 
woman I ever saw, heard or knew of. She is endowed 
with marvelous courage, a very strong will, and an in- 
tensely high ideal of honor. Her love has never at any 
time diminished, but has grown always until I feel that 
it has reached the point that can reasonably be consid- 
ered the acme of perfect love. I am the richest of men 
in that I am blest with the truest, the most honorable 
and loving wife in the world". 

This exquisite tribute to a wife was set down in the 
will of the late Major Charles O. Baird of the 413th 
Signal Corps battalion, who as the directing head of all 
the telephone and telegraph lines used by the American 
expeditionary forces in France worked under such high 
pressure that he died of heart lesion. 

To the newspaper reporters who besieged Mrs. Baird 
in her little home in the borough of Queens, New York, 
she asked smilingly, "Is it so strange for a man to love 
his wife and then say as much?" 

It is stranger than it ought to be. Real love between 
man and woman should be the accustomed thing, not 
a nine days' wonder. 

If it transpires that a marriage is a failure, the world 
usually assumes that it was a woman ^s fault. It was 
refreshing to hear the mother of sons say a few days ago 

140 



POETRY IN life's PROSE 

that a good husband usually makes a good wife unless 
the girl is of very unpromising material. She declared 
that the majority of women change far less than men 
after they are married, that a girl is just what she is, 
whether she be single or married. Most men, on the 
contrary, she asserted, put their best foot forward until 
after they are married, when they unblushingly display 
their true natures. 

When asked how she had won and held the love of her 
husband, *Hhe perfect wife" answered that she ''was 
trying all the time to do those things that made my 
loved one happy". 

How many men or women put forth a conscious effort 
all the time to make their loved ones happy ? How many 
form the habit of taking their loved ones for granted ? A 
thousand things claim their time, attention, energy and 
thoughts. In the midst of a busy life, it is so easy to drift 
along on the tide of events, assuming that those with 
whom we live in close relation are well enough satisfied. 
Men and women, at least most of them, do not mean to be 
thoughtless or neglectful. They simply fail to under- 
stand what claims love makes upon othei*s and what they 
want it to mean. 

Women are keen judges of "the little things that 
count". And why should they not be? The world is 
made up of ant-hills rather than mountains. Life is the 
sum total of a great many small acts and occurrences, 
varied occasionally by big events. Women are much 
more discerning and fastidious about what men call mere 
trifles than the latter usually suspect. 

Women are expected to be eternally on the alert to 
keep their husband's love. You read in all of the 

141 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

advice-to-women columns in the newspapers and maga- 
zines that the wife must present a neat and attractive 
appearance before her husband. Why should this rule 
be one-sided? Why should there not be columns writ- 
ten to men about ''How to Keep Your Wife's Love?" 
There is many a husband who, by his personal careless- 
ness, makes himself just as distasteful to his wife as she 
is to him when she goes about in a faded kimono and 
curl papers. It takes two to hold up the tone of a fam- 
ily and renew the honeymoon from the first bridal day 
to the golden wedding. 

Before marriage, the man assumes that the woman at 
his side is unable to step up the curbstone without his 
gallant assistance. After marriage she may toil up 
flights of stairs and carry heavy burdens. It may seem 
like a little thing for a husband to offer to carry the 
baby upstairs at night, but it is a little lift that will 
touch the heart of almost any wife. Most husbands are 
very courteous to their wives in public. They help them 
in taking off or putting on their wraps. They step back 
and permit their wives to pass through a door ahead. 
It is in the privacy of home that a husband's courtesy is 
put to the real test. If it be a veneer, he will save it for 
public exhibition. If it be genuine, it is something 
that, in the essentials, he never will forget to observe. 

There ai^ times when a wife is as hungry for demon- 
strations of love as is a little child. A woman is a 
woman whether she lives in a log cabin or in a stone 
mansion. Her nature craves little attentions, compli- 
ments and courtesies. If men understood this need of 
the feminine nature, this heart hunger of a wife for the 
expressed approval of her husband, they would say and 

142 



POBTRY IN LIFB*S PROSE 

do a great many more little things for their wives that 
they ordinarily do not so much as think about. Just a 
little word of appreciation for the wife's new blouse, 
for the hat she has so cleverly trimmed that she might 
help her husband save, the delicious dish she has pre- 
pared for dinner, the rearrangement of the furniture in 
a room, and a dozen other things women do to make their 
married life and their homes as successful as they can. 

Why should the little courtesies and compliments and 
appreciations that make a woman happy be discarded 
after marriage? Why in the midst of the prose of 
every-day living should husband and wife forget all the 
poetry ? 

Perfect love would not be so rare a phenomenon if 
more husbands and wives, like Major and Mrs. Baird, 
''tried all the time to do those things which make the 
loved one happy". 



143 



INSIGNIA OF A LADY 



■TBr7|HAT is the first thing you notice about a soldier 

^^m in uniform ? Is it not the insignia he wears on 

^BP his coat? Do you not look for those signs 

which indicate whether he is in the infantry 

or the artillery, whether he is a lieutenant, a captain, a 

brigadier or major general, or just a doughboy? Do 

you not also look for those gold stripes on his arm which 

indicate that he has seen service overseas? 

Now, the soldier is not the only person in this world 
who wears insignia. Nor is the only kind of insignia 
that of army or nav>\ 

Every woman displays certain insignia, though she 
may be quite unaware of that fact. What are the in- 
signia we expect to see displayed by a woman? Are 
they not those of a lady? 

What are the insignia of a lady? 

Her dress, her manner and her speech. 

Whenever you see a woman wearing the insignia of a 
lady, she does not do so by attracting attention to her 
costume, unless it be by its simple beauty, its elegance 
and that quality we call good taste. The very moment 
you look at a lady, you realize that she is in harmony 
with her surroundings; that she is wearing that which 
suits her, and that it is the right thing for the time and 
place. You say to yourself, ' ' She looks like a lady ' '. She 
has that something about every detail of her toilette 
which suggests refinement and gentility. It is an art 
to dress ''like a lady", but it is one that every woman, 

144 



INSIGNIA OF A LADY 

regardless of her opportunities or condition, can acquire 
if she tries. 

What of the insignia of manner? 

In a word, courtesy, expressed by unfailing kindness 
and thoughtfulness of others. 

The woman who displays the insignia of a lady by her 
manner never talks loud in the street. She is quiet, like- 
wise, at public entertainments. No woman wearing the 
insignia of a lady will talk while an artist is singing or 
playing, or while a speaker is on his feet. She does not 
turn around when there is some disturbance at the rear 
of the room, nor does she stare as others enter or make 
remarks about them. If she goes into the house of God, 
she enters into the form of worship unostentatiously, and 
she does not scribble in prayer or hymn book or mutilate 
either one. She makes room if she can for others as they 
enter, nor does she stubbornly cling to the aisle seat. 

The woman wearing the insignia of a lady does not 
rudely push ahead of others when entering a public 
conveyance. If a man is so gallant as to give her his 
seat, she murmurs a pleasant 'Hhank you". She will 
offer her seat to an elderly woman or to one carrying a 
baby. She is courteous to all salesmen and saleswomen 
and she does not forget to speak to them a courteous 
word of appreciation when she has been well served. She 
is invariably polite in talking over the telephone, and 
she knows that "Central's" trying task is rendered no 
easier by the men and women who "bawl her out". She 
stands in the presence of older persons and she lets an 
older woman or a guest precede her through the door. 
She is as courteous to the members of her own family as 
she is to acquaintances and friends. And no matter 

145 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

what may be her heartaches, she tries to radiate cheer- 
fulness. 

Invariably you can detect a woman 's rank by her voice 
and manner of speech. An exquisite voice and manner 
of speaking are more engaging than beauty. In fact, 
nothing gives one so severe a shock as to hear harsh, 
strident tones or vulgar, low words issuing from the 
lips of a beautiful woman. Slang, unless it be used with 
great nicety and discrimination, creates an unpleasant 
impression. As for loud laughter, it is but ''the noisy 
testimony of the joy of the mob". In conversation, it is 
well to talk often, but not to talk long, so that if you 
fail to please, at least, you will not tire your hearer. 

Harmonious and appropriate dress, invariable kind- 
ness and courteous manners, a well-modulated voice and 
pure diction — these are the insignia of a lady. And 
she who displays them will be recognized as a lady 
whether she be in Fifth Avenue, New York or in the 
roughest frontier town in the whole country. 



146 




AFTER COLLEGE— WHAT? 

VERY year thousands of young girls come out 
of finishing schools and colleges, wondering 
what they will do next. They have a vague 
sense of wanting to justify the time they 
have given to their schooling since they left high 
school and the money that has been spent upon them, 
both to their families and to their conununities. Every 
conscientious graduate is eager to make her educa- 
tion function, and to make its value visible to the 
home-folk and her friends. 

What happens to the girl graduate who emerges from 
finishing school or college, supplied with a lot of new 
theories which she feels that she must somehow put into 
use? 

If she belongs to a prosperous family, she will be ex- 
pected to fit back into the family circle and the com- 
munity's social life. If she must go to work, nine times 
out of ten, she has been permitted to come out of col- 
lege with nothing definite and tangible to offer to an 
exacting business world which in turn has nothing to 
offer her in the way of a position that will harmonize 
with her ambitions and ideals. 

If she belongs to the first class, what can she do? 

As a matter of fact, she does not know what to do 
except to follow the lead of her parents. Her father, 
who would have been utterly disgusted with a son that 
refused to prepare himself for a chosen vocation, has 
repeatedly discouraged his daughter from taking so 
practical a course. He argnes that after she has been 

147 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

away at college for four years, he and her mother want 
to have her at home with them, which is quite the natural 
feeling for parents. He tells her that he has plenty of 
money, and that she never will have to earn her own 
way. "It is so delightful for your parents to have you 
with them", the family friends say to her. She feels 
that she does owe something in the way of personal 
gratification, after all they have done for her. How 
many girls are proof against arguments of parental af- 
fection and the lure of a social career? If, indeed, they 
were so, would we not love them less? 

Let us suppose, on the contrary, that the girl grad- 
uate decides that the wisest course she can pursue to 
save herself from boredom, if she does not like society, 
or to secure an income of her own, is to enter the business 
world. 

But, what is the first thing she asks of the business 
world? Nine times out of ten you will hear her say, 
"Oh, I want to do something interesting". What does 
that mean? It means that she is not nearly so anxious 
to undertake a work that will be genuinely useful and 
constructive as something that will win instant applause 
from the crowd. She wants a task in which she can ' ' ex- 
press herself", one in which she can make "her per- 
sonality felt". It is then she finds herself confronted 
with a barrier — the business world is looking for gen- 
uinely useful women who will work for their work's 
sake, not for women whose dominant idea is to exploit 
themselves. 

"Since the home seems to be passing", said a mother, 
"it is hardly worth while to train one's daughters to be 
wives and homemakers, and yet, if they are in no im- 

148 



AFTER COLLEGE — WHAT? 

mediate necessity of making their own living, it does 
not seem quite the thing to fit them for business or pro- 
fessional life.'* 

In the history of the world there never has been an 
era so trying to young women, who cannot know whether 
they are destined to be wives and mothers or women of 
the workaday world. Suppose a girl prefers the career 
of a wife and homemaker, and suppose she prepares her- 
self for that. Society can offer her no guarantee that she 
will marry. Or, on the other hand, suppose she is edu- 
cated for a profession at her own request; then to her 
own amazement and that of her friends, she may fall in 
love and marry following her graduation, when she is 
not much better prepared to take up homelife than her 
domestically inclined sister was equipped for a commer- 
cial career. 

Countless young girls of the well-to-do class are left 
to drift when they come out of school. Forgetting that 
they are vital young creatures with the right to some- 
thing more satisfying than a life of pleasure, we wonder 
why they become reckless and offend Mrs. Grundy. 

For the present there appears to be only one fair way 
to meet this problem — I do not assume to solve it. That 
way is to train thoroughly every girl for some gainful 
occupation, and to permit her to follow that if she has 
the will to do so. In that event, she will not be tor- 
mented with the demon of futility, nor will she feel 
that she must apologize to her family and to society if 
she does not marry straightway. 



149 



THE CHEERFUL HUSBAND 



F I should ever marry again, I hope that I will 
be so fortunate as to get a jolly man for a 
husband", said a young widow who had di- 
vorced a chronic grouch. ''There is nothing 
more depressing than the companionship of a man who 
is eternally in a bad humor. During the first years of 
my married life, I used to spend hours trying to think 
up interesting topics of conversation, and gathering up 
cheerful little stories to tell my husband, always in the 
hope that I could break through his gloom." 

Ill-humor is the most contemptible of faults because 
there is no excuse for it. The man who cultivates a 
sullen temper is the most selfish of all human creatures. 
He tears down everybody with whom he comes in con- 
tact and his very presence distills a poison that blights 
his associates. Many a wife who looks 60 at the age of 
40 has aged prematurely because all during her married 
life she has had to bear with a husband's ugly disposi- 
tion, his carping criticisms, and scowls and snarling 
comments. 

Occasionally there is a man who thinks it is ''smart" 
to make his wife afraid of him and w^ho with more or 
less regularity stages a tantrum in order to keep her 
"toeing the mark". He may be a "good provider". 
He may not be otherwise brutal. But for all the fear 
and uncertainty and anguish he causes her, he almost 
might as well be an out-and-out villian — so much suffer- 
ing does he cause. 

I care not how talented a man is, if he says to himself, 

150 



THE CHEERFUL HUSBAND 

''This world is my natural enemy, and I must keep an 
eye on it ; I am going to watch my wife to see that she 
does not betray me; I have no faith in friendship or 
human kindness; nevertheless I am going to realize my 
ambitions and get what I want" is swimming against 
the current of the universe. His distrust of others breeds 
distrust in them, and his hardness arouses their sus- 
picions. With every step he takes he puts a handicap on 
his efforts, and however great his material success, he 
will never get the fullest enjoyment of it. How differ- 
ent is the life of the man who says: ''This world and 
our life in it is just about what we make it. Friendship 
gravitates toward those w^ho deserve it and love is 
returned a thousand fold". Good flows to that man on 
every current, and a thousand unseen forces are set in 
motion to carry him onward to his goal. 

Ella Wheeler Wilcox once said that she wished a pro- 
fessor or preceptress of optimism might be introduced 
into every school in the world. As a matter of fact, the 
science of loving humanity is more important than 
higher mathematics, and the fine art of keeping cheer- 
ful is more useful than a knowledge of a dozen foreign 
languages. 

In order to protect ourselves from other peoples' 
glooms and ill-humor, we ought not to take their rude- 
ness or complaining as personal to ourselves. We ought 
to realize that men and women's grouches usually are 
attributable to one of two causes, ill-health or lack of 
wholesome training. On the other hand, we should ac- 
cept the kindness of people and their efforts to rise above 
their troubles as much for our benefit as their own sakes, 
as personal favors. 

151 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

I have noticed this — that well-bred persons are seldom 
complainers. There is a streak of commonness in peo- 
ple who are persistently gloomy, grouchy or sullen, who 
cannot make themselves or anybody else happy, who are 
eternally suspicious of others, and who always can find 
something to fuss or fret about. One of the truest evi- 
dences of aristocracy is a courageous bearing through 
the ups and downs of every-day life. 

Let no husband delude himself with the notion that he 
appears deep, profound or inscrutable when he main- 
tains a sullen silence, and when he habitually opens his 
lips only to criticise. Men of the highest wisdom make 
a practice of maintaining a cheerful spirit and of seeing 
the best, not the worst in their fellow-men. 



152 



MARRIAGE AND THE MARGIN OF AGE 



OW much difference should there be in the ages 
of men and women who marry? Is happy 
marriage possible between a man of mature 
years and a very young woman? Can an 
older woman and a very young man find permanent sat- 
f action in each other? Does a margin of two to five 
years promise the ideal basis for a successful union f Or, 
is a difference of ten years more favorable to sustained 
happiness ? 

From five to ten years is probably the safest margin 
of difference between the ages of husband and wife. As 
she grows older the average woman does not preserve 
the semblance of youth so well as her husband, unless 
she happens to be one of those fortunate persons who 
can take the utmost care of herself. When married 
couples reach the meridian of life, that is, between 40 
and 50 years of age, the husband often appears the 
younger, a situation that is bound to inspire chagrin 
in the wife, who nine times out of ten, comes to fear that 
her spouse may be attracted to a more youthful form 
and face. 

The successful man of business is often a miracle of 
freshness, youth and good looks until he is 60 years of 
age, for the man who has brains enough to make a suc- 
cess of his work has brains enough to not worry over 
conditions he cannot help. The contrary is true of a 
good many women who seem to find a voluptuous pleas- 
ure in making themselves unhappy, in fretting over de- 
tails and fussing over a thousand petty things which 

153 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

are quite , immaterial and irrelevant to the real business 
of life. 

There is something bordering on both the ridiculous 
and the pathetic in those instances of abnormal love 
where a woman of 40 or 50 falls desperately in love with 
a man many years her junior. In almost every case 
the passion that unites masculine May with feminine 
December is inspired by a woman of extraordinary 
brains, beauty or strength of character. The young 
m.an is dazzled by the mistress of a thousand subtleties. 
He is fascinated by her ability to bring out the best that 
is within him. Older women who have this faculty for 
attracting young men know how to make the shyest 
youth shine with an effulgent glory. They have an in- 
sinuating way of uncovering in a young and inexperi- 
enced man such depths as he did not before suspect in 
himself. 

As men grow older their general tendency is toward 
specialization. The tendency of the ripening woman, 
on the contrary, is toward diversification. The more 
brilliant the woman, the wider are her interests, among 
which may be society, sports, art, literature, politics and 
travel. She establishes a thousand points of contact with 
people, and she learns a thousand ways to play upon 
susceptible human nature. This fullness of knowledge 
often renders her quite irresistible to a young man, pro- 
vided she has also kept a certain amount of physical 
exuberance and the fine faculty for making friends with 
time. Women are usually drawn into affairs of this 
unnatural kind in the hope of renewing the sensations of 
their youth ; or having made a mercenary or disappoint- 
ing marriage in their teens, they seek in a second and 

154 



MARRIAGE AND THE MARGIN OF AGB 

later union to experience the emotions they missed in 
the springtime of their lives. It is doubtful if the 
woman of 45 or 50 who is contemplating marriage with 
a younger man ever hesitates on the point of her own 
disillusionment, though she is almost sure to entertain a 
fear that she may be supplanted later in his affections 
by a woman nearer his own age. But, the chances are 
that she may tire of her youthful lover even before he 
has exhausted his resources of affection for her. 

Disraeli's marriage was a happy exception to this rule. 
Overwhelmingly ambitious, he secured through his wife 
not only the money to consummate his ambitious, but 
the ripe experience and the steady heart and hand of 
a thorough woman of the world. Mrs. Disraeli adored 
her "Dizzy" as she called him, and naturally so, for no 
woman could have failed to be devoted to so brilliant and 
charming a personality as the great English statesman. 

Unions among men of ripe years and young women 
stand a better chance of happiness, though they must 
violate in some measure that natural law which decrees 
that youth shall call to youth. Chauncey M. Depew, the 
delightful octogenarian, and his younger wife seem to 
have realized genuine happiness together. Luther Bur- 
bank at the age of 62 married his secretary who at the 
time was 30 years old. Where a young woman and an 
older man are in accord temperamentally, it may be 
possible for them to achieve a fairly happy and satis- 
factory marriage. Any abnormal element entering into 
marriage, however, is sure to be prejudicial to the ideal 
happiness, for May naturally loves May, and December 
loves December, and as Kipling would say, the twain 
shall never meet. 

155 



GLORY OP THE DINNER HOUR 

REAKFAST is the poetry of eating." 

** Strong with the invigoration of sleep, 
still animated with the intimacies of soap 
and w^ater, a man comes to his breakfast 
like a boy. A boy comes down like winged mercury 
and takes his seat as if alighted on a heaven-kissing 
hill. Breakfast is the work of Lucifer, Son of the 
Morning, and no doubt caused the arrogance that 
wrought his fall. Freshness sits at your right hand, 
the dust of the day has not settled on your soul, and 
you meet your fellows like morning stars shining at 
each other. 'Good morning.' What a delightful 
greeting! Did a 'Good evening' ever sound so musical 
as 'good morning' when the first fragrance of coffee, 
m'uffins and honey bursts upon the anticipating senses? 
Tripping downstairs is almost like flying, and pulling 
out one's chair gives the last fillup to the appetite. 
Everything is welcome and welcoming." 

Who but a man could have such sentiments? Who 
but a man could approach the breakfast table feeling 
and looking like a morning star? No female of the 
species could be so sentimental. "Poetry of eating" — 
indeed. Of all the repasts that take place in one round 
of the clock, none is so songless, so lack-luster as break- 
fast which is the very prose of pasturage. Luncheon 
is only a shade less interesting, coming as it does between 
the morning's effort and the afternoon's ennui and 

156 



GLORY OF THE DINNER HOUR 

fatigue. It is not until the tea-hour that feminine hu- 
manity begins to feel salubrious, for tea with its delight- 
ful tonic quality and aromatic fragrance is touched with 
the enchantment of the closing day. 

Breakfast never has held for us the interest that it 
did for certain Englishmen during the last century. Be- 
ing workers in America, devotees of the strenuous life, 
we get ourselves out of bed, dress, drink our coffee and 
hurry away to business. The only incident of the 
American breakfast is the American newspaper, taken 
without comment. 

It never seems to have occurred to us to copy the de- 
lightful breakfasts that were given by Sidney Smith. 
We never have celebrated such morning festivities as 
Daniel Webster wrote about in 1839 when he met at 
breakfast in London ''Boz", Tom Moore, Wordsworth 
and many other distinguished Englishmen. Men do not 
give breakfasts in this country, and when women hold 
them, they occur at 12 o'clock. 

' ' The wife who permits her husband to see her before 
the luncheon hour does so at her peril", declared a man 
who is wise in the ways of this world. Fine advice for 
the plutocracy, but doubtful for the proletariat. There 
is a large modicum of truth in it, however, and if Bal- 
zac were here to consult about it, he likely would char- 
acterize so daring a woman as either a philosopher or a 
fool. Women are not at their best at breakfast. Only 
children and men get up with the freshness of the morn- 
ing upon them, and doubtless there would be fewer 
domestic infelicities, if all households had cooks to pre- 
pare breakfast for all husbands, and wives could post- 

157 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 

pone their appearance until a kinder hour of the day. 

As for dinner — ah, there is something warm, pagan, 
exotic about dinner, when woman is in her element. 

When a woman goes out to dinner with a man for the 
first time, little does he imagine how much is going to 
depend upon the way that dinner goes off. If he studies 
the menu with the business-like manner that he would 
scan the day's report of the markets, or a railroad time- 
card, it bodes ill for future romance. But if he scans 
the carte de jour to discover some delectable dish that 
will tempt the illusive appetite of his divinity, if he in- 
sists to the waiter that every dish shall be more skill- 
fully, more exquisitely prepared than it ever was pre- 
pared before, she is made secretly happy. One course 
follows another, all too quickly until finally they sit 
over their coffee, talking about the only thing that is 
worth talking about — love — until the waiter brings the 
bill. Then, if he glances at the bill nonchalantly, and 
pays it like a prince, even though he be not very wealthy, 
and arising from the table, he waves aside the waiter and 
himself folds his Angelica in her cloak, she is suddenly 
caught up into heaven among the rosy clouds of romantic 
love. 

But, who can think of love at breakfast? Who feels 
like pouring out a libation to his Gillian? Who could 
look raptly over the breakfast table into his Sylvia's 
blue eyes? Over the breakfast table there falls none of 
the gold and purple radiance which shines over the cere- 
monial of dinner. Breakfast lacks the enchantments of 
comradeship, the sense of romantic adventure shared 
which one may feel at dinner. At breakfast there are no 

158 



ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 



divine frivolities, no exquisite coquettries; there is no 
snatching of the fearful and wonderful joys of dinner, 
no hint of that mysterious paradise which came into be- 
ing when "male and female created He them'*. 



159 



:;^;r- 



